• Is America Heading For A Systems Collapse?
  Is America Heading For A Systems Collapse?

  Commentary authored by Victor Davis Hanson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  In modern times, as in ancient Rome, several nations have suffered a “systems collapse.” The term describes the sudden inability of once-prosperous populations to continue with what had ensured the good life as they knew it.

  

  Abruptly, the population cannot buy, or even find, once plentiful necessities. They feel their streets are unsafe. Laws go unenforced or are enforced inequitably. Every day things stop working. The government turns from reliable to capricious if not hostile.

  Consider contemporary Venezuela. By 2010, the once well-off oil-exporting country was mired in a self-created mess. Food became scarce, crime ubiquitous.

  Radical socialism, nationalization, corruption, jailing opponents, and the destruction of constitutional norms were the culprits.

  Between 2009 and 2016, a once relatively stable Greece nearly became a Third World country. So did Great Britain in its socialist days of the 1970s.

  Joe Biden’s young presidency may already be leading the United States into a similar meltdown.

  Hard Left “woke” ideology has all but obliterated the idea of a border. Millions of impoverished foreigners are entering the United States illegally—and during a pandemic without either COVID-19 tests or vaccinations.

  The health bureaucracies have lost credibility as official communiques on masks, herd and acquired immunity, vaccinations, and comorbidities apparently change and adjust to perceived political realities.

  After decades of improving race relations, America is regressing into a pre-modern tribal society.

  Crime soars. Inflation roars. Meritocracy is libeled and so we are governed more by ideology and tribe.

  The soaring prices of the stuff of life—fuel, food, housing, health care, transportation—are strangling the middle class.

  Millions stay home, content to be paid by the state not to work. Supply shortages and empty shelves are the new norm.

  Nineteenth-century-style train robberies are back. So is 1970s urban violence, replete with looting, carjackings, and random murdering of the innocent.

  After the Afghanistan debacle, we have returned to the dark days following defeat in Vietnam, when U.S. deterrence abroad was likewise shattered, and global terrorism and instability were the norms abroad.

  Who could have believed a year ago that America would now beg Saudi Arabia and Russia to pump more oil—as we pulled our own oil leases, and canceled pipelines and oil fields?

  Our path to systems collapse is not due to an earthquake, climate change, a nuclear war, or even the COVID-19 pandemic.

  Instead, most of our maladies are self-inflicted. They are the direct result of woke ideologies that are both cruel and antithetical to traditional American pragmatism.

  Hard-Left district attorneys in our major cities refuse to charge thousands of arrested criminals—relying instead on bankrupt social justice theories.

  Law enforcement has been arbitrarily defunded and libeled. Police deterrence is lost, so looters, vandals, thieves, and murderers more freely prey on the public.

  “Modern monetary theory” deludes ideologues that printing trillions of dollars can enrich the public, even as the ensuing inflation is making people poorer.

  “Critical race theory” absurdly dictates that current “good” racism can correct the effects of past bad racism. A once tolerant, multiracial nation is resembling the factionalism of the former Yugoslavia.

  The culprit again is a callous woke ideology that posits little value for individuals, prioritizing only the so-called collective agenda.

  Woke’s trademark is “equity,” or a forced equality of result. Practically, we are becoming a comic-book version of victims and victimizers, with woke opportunists playacting as our superheroes.

  Strangest in 2021 was the systematic attack on our ancient institutions, as we scapegoated our ancestors for our own incompetencies.

  The woke have waged a veritable war against the 233-year-old Electoral College and the right of states to set their own balloting laws in national elections, the 180-year-old filibuster, the 150-year-old nine-person Supreme Court, and the 60-year-old, 50-state union.

  The U.S. military, Department of Justice, FBI, CIA, Center for Disease Control, and National Institutes of Health until recently were revered. Their top echelons were staffed by career professionals mostly immune to the politics of the day.

  Not now. These bureaus and agencies are losing public confidence and support. Citizens fear rather than respect Washington grandees who have weaponized politics ahead of public service.

  Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, Attorney General Merrick Garland, former FBI heads like James Comey and Andrew McCabe, retired CIA director John Brennan, and Anthony Fauci head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—have all politicized and vastly exceeded their professional purviews.

  They sounded off in public fora as if they were elected legislators up for reelection. Some lied under oath. Others demonized critics. Most sought to become media darlings.

  This governmental freefall is overseen by a tragically bewildered, petulant, and incompetent president. In his confusion, an increasingly unpopular President Joe Biden seems to believe his divisive chaos is working, belittling his political opponents as racist Confederate rebels.

  As we head into the 2022 midterm elections, who will stop our descent into collective poverty, division, and self-inflicted madness?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/21/2022 – 23:40

• Renting Robots For Less Than Minimum Wage Is A Boon For Companies
  Renting Robots For Less Than Minimum Wage Is A Boon For Companies

  Automation has rapidly expanded in businesses of all sizes to cope with rising wages and labor shortages. Robotics help firms streamline otherwise inefficient tasks and slash labor costs amid an inflationary environment. 

  Orders for robotic machinery have jumped for automotive, agricultural, construction, electronics, food processing, and warehousing companies. The benefits of employing a robot over a human are now being realized for small and medium-sized companies. 

  Jose Figueroa, who manages Polar Manufacturing, a small company that produces hinges, locks, and brackets in south Chicago, told Wired that he employed a robot on the production line that costs only $8 per hour versus a minimum wage of $15 per hour for humans. He said the robot has allowed workers to concentrate on other tasks while increasing output.

  

  “Smaller companies sometimes suffer because they can’t spend the capital to invest in new technology,” Figueroa said. 

  “We’re just struggling to get by with the minimum wage increase,” he added. 

  Polar pays $8 an hour to use the robot, making it very affordable for small businesses. The manager expects 25 of these production line robots within five years. As for the 70 employees, he expects to retain them but said robots had made it so that no new hires are needed. 

  Over the last two years, the virus pandemic has created a shortage of workers and a whole host of inflationary pressures, from wages to transportation to energy costs, squeezing margins and forcing companies to become more efficient and or pass along the extra costs to consumers.

  Another small business, called Georgia Nut, a confectionery company in Skokie, Illinois, struggles with labor shortages and employs robots for $8 an hour. 

  “Anything that can help reduce labor count or the need for labor is obviously a plus at this particular time,” Steve Chmura, chief operating officer at Georgia Nut, said. 

  Companies like Formic make it possible for small and medium-sized firms to reduce operating expenses and increase capacity by allowing them to pay per hour for robots. Renting robots is a gamechanger for smaller companies than outright purchasing one. 

  Robotics as a service is driving a new wave of affordable automation. This will only accelerate the automation wave (something we’ve described for years) that will displace millions of workers by the end of the decade. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/21/2022 – 23:20

• Ivermectin Could Destroy Justification For Lockdowns And Vaccine Mandates
  Ivermectin Could Destroy Justification For Lockdowns And Vaccine Mandates

  Authored by Harry Lee and Nicholas VandenNieuwenhof via The Epoch Times,

  Federal health agencies haven’t recognized ivermectin as an effective treatment for COVID-19 patients. According to Doctor Leland Stillman, the reason is more political than scientific, because otherwise there would be no basis for lockdowns or vaccine mandates.

  “If ivermectin were recognized by the public health and academic establishment as the drug that it is, that treats acute viral illnesses, one of which is COVID-19, the entire justification for lockdowns, mandates, let alone vaccine research and development would evaporate overnight,” Stillman told The Epoch Times in a recent interview.

  

  Dr. Leland Stillman in an interview with The Epoch Times in Arizona in December, 2021. (The Epoch Times)

  According to Section 564 of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (pdf), the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) can only issue emergency use authorization if certain criteria are met, including “there is no adequate, approved, and available alternative to the product.”

  So if there’s an approved alternative, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—an agency in HHS—can’t issue emergency use authorization for COVID-19 vaccines.

  Stillman said it’s not a conspiracy theory or even an isolated opinion that ivermectin works for treating COVID-19, because tens of thousands of physicians all over the world have recognized its effectiveness.

  

  File photo: A package of ivermectin tablets. (Natasha Holt/The Epoch Times)

  The Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), a nonprofit organization working on protocols to treat patients with COVID-19, regards ivermectin as a core medication used in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. Its website cites 142 studies, among which 93 are peer-reviewed, and 75 with results comparing treatment and control groups showing ivermectin works.

  However, the FDA has repeatedly said that “currently available data do not show ivermectin is effective against COVID-19.”

  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) directed The Epoch Times to contact the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for COVID-19 treatments. NIH referred to their online guidelines about ivermectin: “There is insufficient evidence for the COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel to recommend either for or against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19. Results from adequately powered, well-designed, and well-conducted clinical trials are needed to provide more specific, evidence-based guidance on the role of ivermectin in the treatment of COVID-19.”

  Stillman explained why many doctors are silent on recognizing ivermectin as an effective drug for COVID-19, a disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

  “And the reality that’s really important for people to understand is that doctors can lose their licenses or lose their board certification, which is very important for their income based on insurance guidelines, for speaking out as I have chosen to,” Stillman said.

  Stillman said he is able to speak up because he’s one of very few doctors in the country who takes cash and doesn’t work with insurance companies.

  Graduated from University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville, Virginia, Stillman is now practicing medicine in Kissimmee, Florida. His focus is to help people achieve health with integrative medicine, which combines a number of different modalities, such as traditional Chinese medicine, herbs, nutrition, diet, exercise, and lifestyle changes.

  Two prominent scientists, Martin Kulldorff, previously a professor at Harvard Medical School, and Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of Medicine at Stanford University, also explained why many scientists are silent on this issue as well.

  In an article published in The Epoch Times last month, the two professors said NIH and its National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is headed by Anthony Fauci, control a scientific research budget of billions of dollars every year, and “channel research dollars to nearly every infectious disease epidemiologist, immunologist, and virologist of note in the United States and UK.” So it would be unwise for scientists to upset these health agencies.

  “There’s a lot of politics on this,” Stillman said, referring to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

  “And the way it’s been politicized is really disgraceful and unfortunate. At the end of the day, it’s all about how these corporations who are profiting immensely off of the pandemic.”

  Stillman said freedom is the way out of the current problem.

  “Freedom is absolutely the solution,” Stillman said.

  “Because if you really allow doctors to treat patients on their own terms, without insurance companies, without all this, it can be very affordable, and it can be very effective.

  “Because the reality is that a lot of the care being provisioned right now, it’s just being provisioned based on some bureaucrat’s idea of what’s good medicine, not based on what the patients actually want and think is worth it to them.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/21/2022 – 23:00

• World's First Space-Based Entertainment Studio To Be Launched In 2024
  World’s First Space-Based Entertainment Studio To Be Launched In 2024

  The company co-producing Tom Cruise’s upcoming space movie revealed on Thursday new plans for the world’s first space-based entertainment studio that will attach to the International Space Station (ISS). 

  Space Entertainment Enterprise (SEE), co-founded by producers Elena and Dmitry Lesnevsky, hired Texas-based Axiom Space, Inc. to build a module named SEE-1, which will dock with the Axiom Station, the commercial side of the ISS, in December 2024.

  

  SEE-1’s low-orbit microgravity environment will host television, sports events, films, and music and allow content creators to record 250 miles above Earth.

  “SEE-1 is an incredible opportunity for humanity to move into a different realm and start an exciting new chapter in space.

  “It will provide a unique, and accessible home for boundless entertainment possibilities in a venue packed with innovative infrastructure, which will unleash a new world of creativity,” Dmitry and Elena Lesnevsky said. 

  SEE COO Richard Johnston spoke about “creating the next-generation entertainment venue in space opens countless doors to create incredible new content and make these dreams a reality.” The move is likely the birthing of the space industry. 

  Axiom Station is expected to separate from the ISS in 2028, and the studio module is about 20% of the station’s overall volume. 

  “Adding a dedicated entertainment venue to Axiom Station’s commercial capabilities in the form of SEE-1 will expand the station’s utility as a platform for a global user base and highlight the range of opportunities the new space economy offers,” Michael Suffredini, Axiom’s CEO, said. 

  From Apollo 13 to Gravity to Interstellar to The Martian…visual effects have already taken audiences into space on an unbelievable level. So it makes absolutely no sense to build a studio in space (from a cost analysis perspective).

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/21/2022 – 22:40

• San Francisco Officials Secretly And Illegally Operating An Illicit Drug Use Cite
  San Francisco Officials Secretly And Illegally Operating An Illicit Drug Use Cite

  Authored by Michael Shellenberger and Leighton Woodhouse via substack (emphasis ours),

  San Francisco Mayor London Breed generated national news media coverage last December when she announced a sweeping crackdown on open air drug use and drug dealing in the downtown Tenderloin neighborhood. Shortly after, she announced a “linkage center” aimed at connecting homeless street addicts with drug rehab facilities. Breed’s announcement came in the midst of a local, state, and national debate over whether the city should open a “supervised drug consumption” site as a tactic for reducing drug overdose deaths. 

  

  In fact, the illicit drug consumption site has been up and running since Tuesday inside the linkage center, which is located at 1172 Market Street. The linkage center is located in the United Nations Plaza, the city’s largest open air drug market. The supervised drug consumption area is an outdoor fenced section of the linkage center. 

  

  There is an on-going national debate over the efficacy of supervised drug consumption sites, which are prohibited by state and federal laws, and a continuing local debate over whether and where to open one in San Francisco. Mayor Breed and members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors have advocated a supervised drug consumption site, and purchased two properties in the Tenderloin to serve people suffering from addiction. But the city never approved the creation of a supervised consumption site at the linkage center and the site is in violation of state and federal laws.

  We are the first to report on the operation of the illegal supervised drug consumption site at the linkage center. The two of us witnessed a half-dozen people smoking fentanyl in an outdoor area on the site, and two people passed out at a table. An employee of a city contractor at the linkage center told us that two people had overdosed and been revived since the site opened on Tuesday. 

  

  Subscribe to Michael Schellenberger’s substack here.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/21/2022 – 22:20

• NASA Warns Of "Significant Solar Flare;" Radio Blackout Reported Over Indian Ocean
  NASA Warns Of “Significant Solar Flare;” Radio Blackout Reported Over Indian Ocean

  NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory warned Thursday of a “significant solar flare” event. 

  The powerful burst of energy from the Sun, classified as an M5.5 class flare, sparked radio blackouts across the Indian Ocean.  

  Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare can’t pass through Earth’s atmosphere to affect humans on the ground, however – when intense enough – they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS & communications signals travel.

  — NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) January 20, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  “The Sun emitted a mid-level solar flare on January 20, 2022, peaking at 1:01 am EST,” NASA said. Thursday’s eruption has been classified as an M class, which is medium-sized and leads to radio blackouts. The eruption of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun can be seen below. 

  

  According to spaceweather.com, a shortwave radio blackout across the Indian Ocean has been reported. “Aviators, mariners, and ham radio operators in the area may have noticed unusual propagation effects at frequencies below 30 MHz,” it said.

  We noted last year that Solar Cycle 25 has begun and could result in a flare-up in space weather activity. 

  

  In 2017, FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Administration) planned for a massive solar event that would be strong enough to take down the power grids.

  There has also been a couple of notable solar flare events in the last several years:

  • Huge Solar Flare Sparks Widespread Blackouts, May Deter Korean Missile Launch This Weekend
  • NASA: “Sun Erupts With Significant Flare”

  A new active solar cycle could present danger to the digital economy that has become more reliant than ever on space-based and ground-based communication systems that could be prone to disruption during increasing solar activity bombarding the Earth’s ionosphere. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/21/2022 – 22:00

• "Impossible To Regulate" – Ghost Gunner Introduces New "0% Receiver"
  “Impossible To Regulate” – Ghost Gunner Introduces New “0% Receiver”

  Submitted by The Machine Gun Nest (TMGN).,

  If you’re familiar with 3D printed firearms or 80% receivers, a company that may sound very familiar to you is Defense Distributed. The Austin, Texas-based company was the first to distribute 3D files for their Liberator handgun, empowering anyone with a 3D printer to assemble a firearm privately in their home. 

  

  With the ATF’s pending rule change (which can be read here), previously classified items as not firearms will become firearms, and ATF will start requiring firearms parts to be serialized and tracked like guns. 

  This means that under this rule change if you want to purchase a barrel for a rifle, you would have to undergo a background check like that barrel was a completed gun, even though it isn’t.

  The ATF, DOJ, the anti-gun politicians, and the lobby that supports them seem to think that this will stop people from manufacturing firearms for personal use inside their homes. This couldn’t be further from the truth, even without Defense Distributed’s newest product.

  Enter the Ghost Gunner 3

  

  The Ghost Gunner 3 is a 3 Axis CNC machine that can take a metal block and create a lower receiver in a relatively short period. You can then assemble that lower into a completed firearm without it being registered. 

  Since the only part needed to create these homemade firearms is a block of metal (pictured below), it would be entirely impossible for the ATF to regulate these without an act of congress. 

  

  While the anti-gun politicians pat themselves on the back for “stopping the proliferation of privately made firearms,” Defense Distributed was hard at work crafting a tool that empowers citizens to expand their 2nd amendment rights and makes regulation irrelevant. 

  I was ecstatic to see the Ghost Gunner 3 here at SHOT Show in Las Vegas this week, and I’m excited to see what Defense Distributed does next. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/21/2022 – 21:40

• Trump Calls DeSantis Feud Rumors "Fake News"
  Trump Calls DeSantis Feud Rumors “Fake News”

  President Trump on Thursday said media reports of conflict between he and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis were “totally fake news,” adding that he foresees a good relationship down the road.

  

  During a phone interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Hannity noted that DeSantis rejected the notion that there was conflict between the two – asking Trump “Is he right?”

  “Well, he is right,” Trump replied, going on to praise DeSantis.

  “The Republicans really stuck together, and it was a great thing, and Ron was one of them, and Ron wanted to run [for governor], and I endorsed him, and that helped him greatly, and he went on, and he’s done a really terrific job in Florida,” said Trump, adding “Ron has been very good. He’s been a friend of mine for a long time. It’s totally fake news.“

  Watch:

  Trump just MURDERED the media narrative that there’s tension between him and Gov. DeSantis by calling it “TOTALLY FAKE NEWS” pic.twitter.com/XPezBHSkcy

  — Danny De Urbina (@dannydeurbina) January 21, 2022

  More via Fox News:

  DeSantis, who is running for reelection this year, has seen his popularity surge among Republican voters in his state and around the nation over the past year and a half, thanks in large part to his pushback against COVID-19 restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic.

  After Trump recently said in an interview that politicians who won’t publicly say whether they’ve received a COVID vaccine booster shot are “gutless” – which was widely seen as a shot at DeSantis – the governor appeared to return fire in an interview on the popular conservative podcast “Ruthless.” DeSantis said he should have been “much louder” in trying to convince Trump to oppose lockdowns as the pandemic was sweeping the nation in February and March 2020. 

  And the governor touted that “when COVID was first coming… I was telling Trump ‘stop the flights from China’ because we didn’t know what we were dealing with.” DeSantis shut down Florida as the pandemic engulfed the nation, but was also one of the first governors in 2020 to lift coronavirus restrictions.

  *  *  *

  Do you believe any of this?

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/21/2022 – 21:20

• The Actual Impact Of Bitcoin On War
  The Actual Impact Of Bitcoin On War

  Authored by Matthew Pines via BitcoinMagazine.com,

  The impact of Bitcoin on war will not simply be the eradication of violence, a problem of humanity since the dawn of time…

  

  As bitcoin has appreciated and seen increased global adoption, it has emerged as a macroeconomically relevant phenomenon. This has turned formerly theoretical debates into live, practical questions on how Bitcoin will affect geopolitical relations. The current balance of global power is defined by complex arrangements of military alliances, trade flows, ethnic and religious affinity, cultural influence, linguistic agreement, and, of course, national borders.

  In this author’s view, it is hubris to expect Bitcoin to singularly override or sweep away the accumulated weight and historical inertia of this tightly-bound matrix of interlinked forces. Of course, it is tempting to smooth over this irreducible complexity and hypothesize a “saved” world, where bitcoin is that “one weird trick” to fix all that’s wrong with human civilization. This temptation to “immanentize the eschaton” is common among totalizing belief systems and becomes an emotionally attractive picture of the future, especially in an era where formerly trusted verities of common belief are losing their stabilizing force. And yet, we can still, and increasingly must, analyze the question of violence – especially state violence – in a future world order where Bitcoin is a major, if not the dominant, economic and political force.

  Some reason that Bitcoin will positively adjust the calculus of violence by which states decide how and where to project power and secure their respective interests. By shifting a large portion of national wealth from easily seized and vulnerable tangible assets into digital form, the incentives to violent conflict – as a means of confiscating this wealth – are substantially reduced. This moves the locus of inter-state conflict from the battlefield to the global, competitive mining market. Real wars become hash wars, and the negative externalities of the former (death and destruction) are replaced by the positive externalities of the latter (energy efficient computation and power generation).

  While this is well-reasoned and accords with the likely directional influence of Bitcoin on state competition, it is overly simplistic and incomplete. For human conflict exists on a spectrum: from soft power influence and psychological operations (psyops), gray zone subversion, and deniable covert action or sabotage to more overt forms of military violence via stand-off strikes, large-scale invasion, and (in the escalatory limit) all-out nuclear war.

  To claim Bitcoin will usher in an era of enduring world peace is to argue that it will eliminate all of these long-enduring sources and methods of human conflict. It is possible it will, but there are contrary forces at play that must not be overlooked. Considering the full set of relevant factors, a more reasonable thesis to hold is one in which Bitcoin may constrain certain forms of large-scale, expensive conventional war, but may not (on net) materially reduce human conflict or substantially constrain state violence.

  One can argue that all property claims, when it comes down to it, are enforced via violence or the threat thereof. (Bracket off for now the strong anthropological evidence, especially in human prehistory, that it is possible for communal social arrangements to endure with group-rights to “property,” though it remains an open question how durable these arrangements are as populations scale and cultural heterogeneity erodes the informal norms and coherence of group identity which mitigates violent dispute.) If Bitcoin succeeds in transposing most property claims from a vulnerable physical form to a more easily protected digital bearer asset, then one may argue that bitcoin removes one potent locus of physical violence from the world: physical property. However, even if one holds that all physical property claims are inherent or latent sources of violence, this doesn’t imply that all sources of human violence (namely, war) result from conflict over physical property. So even if Bitcoin succeeds in reducing one driver of war, one may not feel confident in the claim that Bitcoin fixes all, or even the dominant, drivers of war.

  I) Bitcoin reduces the state budget for war … but warfighting technology improvements will give states (and everyone else) “more for less” (partly because of bitcoin).

  One important, and little remarked-upon, factor is a corollary of Jeff Booth’s thesis (well-articulated in his book, ”The Price Of Tomorrow”) on the deflationary impact of technology. Much recent technological progress – especially in computational hardware, machine learning/artificial intelligence, resilient network communications, quantum computation, robotics/unmanned systems, 3D manufacturing, biological synthesis, propulsion systems, novel energetics, space launch and surveillance , among others – is being driven by and for military applications. The implication of Jeff Booth’s thesis (which has been borne out to date) is that just as technology drives exponential progress in consumer goods and services getting better and cheaper, so will the warfighter get “more for less.” More problematic, however, is that this will likely result in a proliferation of advanced technology that “democratizes” violence and distributes powerful capabilities to a broad range of human actors, with their use increasingly unconstrained by rules of engagement, Geneva Conventions, or deterrence considerations.

  One can imagine a world that has fully adopted a Bitcoin standard, but in which zero-day exploits in critical enterprise software and industrial control systems are found and deployed by teenage Minecraft players, autonomous drone-swarms are built and launched by hobbyists for a few hundred dollars, a disaffected postdoc cooks up synthetic viruses in his garage laboratory, and AI-bot armies execute continuous psyops campaigns against target populations. Further, as Jeff Booth has argued, Bitcoin’s natural alignment with these deflationary forces may accelerate technological progress, which while certainly positive for civilization at large, will likely have these kinds of spillover effects.

  At a different scale, once bitcoin becomes a globally-adopted neutral reserve asset, protection of domestic mining operations tightly integrated into energy grids becomes a national security issue. While mining firms within each nation will likely be regulated into coopetitive arrangements that dissuade disorderly sabotage, no such constraints will exist between states. In the zero-sum battle for the next nonce (and assuming the combination block reward and fee reflect the state of global adoption), the incentive to undercut one’s global competition will be large.

  This will manifest first in sophisticated corporate espionage and sabotage operations, likely involving the same sorts of firms which now hire armies of ex-intelligence and military professionals to conduct all sorts of unsavory activities around the world. As is the case with strategically important industries today, these types of activities tend to fuse with state intelligence services. Bitcoin mining may become a strategically important industry, if not the most important such industry in the most geopolitically powerful and relevant nations.

  Thus, it should not be surprising if we come to see state intelligence agencies brought into service to protect domestic mining operations and develop offensive capabilities to threaten their global competitors. Given the interconnection of these mining operations with regional energy production and grid networks, this will compound the existing risks states face in protecting against cyberattacks and disruption to critical infrastructure.

  States (and/or their deniable proxies) will find and exploit vulnerabilities in each other’s mining and national Bitcoin operations, which may range from executing sophisticated supply chain attacks that compromise competitor ASICs, to outright physical or cyber-enabled sabotage. This will set off an increasingly expensive game to relocate and protect one’s domestic mining infrastructure. However, the lessons from the current spate of cyber-incidents is that the offense is inherently advantaged over defense in these types of digital environments. It could be the case that the direct, substantial incentive that Bitcoin provides energy owners to protect their networks will finally focus attention on basic cyber-hygiene, insider-threat mitigation, and effective business continuity activities, but this is more a hope than a rational expectation.

  While beyond the scope of this essay to fully analyze, it is plausible that bitcoin, if adopted as the primary global neutral reserve asset, will constrain (but not eliminate) most forms of national debt finance. Note that it is likely that before it reaches equilibrium adoption as a unit of account (which could be a very long ways away), bitcoin will spend a substantial period of time as a reserve asset (taking increasingly dominant share of similar assets) in its store of value function and somewhat as a medium of exchange vehicle to settle large balances between institutions and governments and in jurisdictions which have adopted it as legal tender.

  In such a period, there are reasons to believe that large states will still find willing creditors for their national debt (denominated in local currency or, more likely, USD), subject to collateral conditions relating to that nation’s (provable) bitcoin reserve. Such creditors will assess the default risk of such sovereigns in a similar manner as today (and as throughout history), and will take the nation’s bitcoin reserve, its taxing ability, fiat currency acceptability, and extant geopolitical position as factors to consider when lending out their own bitcoin to help these governments’ finance expenditures beyond their existing fiscal balance.

  Note that this will likely be a much more constrained form of debt finance than we currently see, though it is hard to estimate this precisely. It most likely would not be sufficient to enable states to debt-finance large-scale, conventional wars involving mass mobilization, extensive heavy armaments, and protracted deployments, let alone decades-long occupations or “nation-building” imperial misadventures.

  Even if one doubts the above argument and believes that Bitcoin will absolutely bind governments to self-fund entirely via tax arrangements subject to revised social contracts delimiting the scope of such spending, war likely won’t disappear. This is because war (especially in the form near-future technology will enable) may not be that expensive to prosecute. As we saw above, the exponential effect of technological deflation (partly enabled by bitcoin shifting investor time preference and raising the hurdle rate for productive capital investment) will accelerate the trend already underway to radically cheap, but asymmetrically effective weapons.

  National defense strategies (among the most geopolitically significant states) will plausibly evolve towards a barbell strategy that combines irregular warfare capabilities with nuclear deterrence. The most expensive parts of national defense budgets derive from having to pay, train, equip, supply, transport, and provide medical benefits to human soldiers, and to construct manned platforms (e.g., aircraft carrier battlegroups) to project violent force. The next few decades will see a shift towards autonomous and unmanned weapons systems and cyber-enabled electronic warfare to deny, disrupt, and destroy similar adversary systems. Humans will be reserved for the special operations and irregular warfare activities in the broadening “gray zone” of state conflict that sits just below the threshold of overt peer-on-peer war. One perverse effect of the very power of nuclear weapons is the creation of deterrence voids for non-nuke threshold conflict, especially in deniable or gray-zone domains.

  As the capabilities to cheaply execute effective operations in these domains increases, the incentive to do so, while knowing the nuclear threshold sits high above, will be strong for many states. One can imagine revanchist regimes or those disposed to take special advantage of newly affordable weapons systems to prosecute long-awaited grievances or secure what they may see as marginal, and increasingly perishable, military superiority. For example, the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war saw Azerbaijan combine drone technology and long-range sensors to direct precision fires that dominated the battlefield and decisively tipped the scales in a decades-long conflict. These capabilities would have been out of reach just a few years ago, but were made affordable to such a small state by the deflationary impact of technological progress.

  It’s possible that even the relatively minimal costs of sustaining these forms of asymmetric capabilities will outweigh their benefit (priced in bitcoin, even). But this seems unlikely, especially if the technology deflation continues to make them ever cheaper, and while the world remains a contested, finite geography riven by historically embedded lines of division and political heterogeneity.

  II) States will likely continue to sustain and expand world-ending nuclear capabilities, even under a Bitcoin standard, merely as a result of the locked-in logic of deterrence.

  The one military technology where states are likely to be less cost sensitive are nuclear weapons. Despite the hopes of disarmament activists decades running, this particular genie isn’t going back in the bottle. The existential consequences of nuclear weapons will continue to hang like a sword of Damocles over humanity until we reach some (as yet unenvisioned) plane of enlightenment that ushers in enduring global accord. Until that time, we will require that states invest whatever is necessary in order to maintain extremely secure and reliable nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) systems.

  It isn’t too much of a stretch to call the U.S. government (to take one example) as a form of nuclear monarchy. While our constitution vests the Commander in Chief (CiC) executive powers over the armed forces, it formally remands the authority to declare war with the Congress. While presidents have found various ways around this particular constraint, they still feel compelled to come to Congress to receive the political dispensation offered by “authorizations to use military force.”

  The time-scales of nuclear war, however, render all of that moot. Given the precious few minutes between launch detection and detonation, the CiC is given sole and unchallenged authority to issue counter-strike orders, able to select from a menu of pre-selected target packages (defined in the Single Integrated Operational Plan). This nuclear SIOP is designed explicitly to convince our nuclear adversaries that a devastating retaliatory strike is guaranteed, a deterrence logic captured by the dictum of mutually assured destruction.

  The fraught stability of this system courted catastrophe several times during the Cold War, and that era was comparatively simple from a game-theoretic perspective. As more (and less stable) states continue to nuclearize, the dynamics of multi-party deterrence becomes dangerously unpredictable. Further, technology is pushing the capability envelope, from dial-a-yield “tactical” weapons (e.g., the U.S. B61 bomb) to mega-weapons (e.g., Russia’s Status-6 unmanned nuclear torpedo with a potentially 100MT payload), as well as novel delivery platforms like hypersonic glide vehicles and fractional orbital bombardment systems (like that recently demonstrated by China).

  Now, you may be asking why this excursion on nuclear weapons. Well, if the question at issue is the degree to which Bitcoin may constrain state violence, and war in particular, it seems to me absolutely imperative to recognize the deeply embedded present system of nuclear deterrence. Such a structure – which places the power of world-ending violence in the hands of individual political leaders – isn’t likely to change anytime soon (no matter what happens with Bitcoin). Humble Bitcoiners must reconcile themselves to this unfortunate reality, and hope that the enlightened Bitcoiner leaders of the future will dedicate themselves to reinvigorate the failed non-proliferation, denuclearization, and arms-reduction efforts of our current politicians.

  III) Bitcoin fixes a lot of things, but war is unlikely to be one of them (at least for the foreseeable future).

  More fundamentally, human conflict isn’t always (or even mostly) motivated to directly seize monetary wealth. We fight each other for many reasons, including over scarce assets (e.g., water rights, agricultural land, minerals, rare earth metals, oil, and natural geographic features like ports, navigable waterways, straits, etc.), ethnic, tribal, or religious enmity, national pride or honor, domestic political wagging-of-the-dog, or just because of some individual leader’s mania or even group collective insanity.

  While humans are capable of some wondrous things, our capacity for violence and destruction (especially against our own self-considered and “rational” interest) is legion. In the “long-run,” one can, possibly, envision a utopia of abundance where all conceivable axes of human conflict have been eliminated or mitigated. But this seems so far off as to distract from the more likely practical scenarios we must navigate in the decades ahead.

  Bitcoin as a bearer asset presents immense benefits as well as security challenges for individual holders. These will scale with the scale of adoption. It will be hard to steal a nation’s or a large corporation’s bitcoin, but not impossible, and the incentives to try will be large. Right now, national governments substantially invest in securing domestic critical infrastructure – especially the financial system and its centralized, interconnected digital ledgers – from cyberattack, insider exploitation, theft, sabotage, and natural hazard disruption. Bitcoin’s ledger needs no such protection thanks to the geographic distribution, scale-free self-healing network structure, and endogenous incentives of miners (bracket off the 51% attack arguments here), but our keys do.

  If you don’t believe the combined intelligence and defense capabilities of the world’s (remaining, likely most powerful) states will not invest in forms of violence, compellence, theft, sabotage, and manipulation to undercut their rival’s economic stability, I encourage more “adversarial thinking.”

  Conclusion

  The precise outlines of the future state of geopolitical competition in a Bitcoin standard are hard to foresee. Exactly how the incentives of Bitcoin mining and national reserve adoption may affect the calculus of inter-state violence is unknowable. Still, we can reason and explore the parameter space of possibilities given present conditions and projected trends. There are good reasons to believe that Bitcoin may reduce the incentive for large-scale, conventional war and imperial-style occupations. At the same time, such forms of state violence may become outmoded regardless of Bitcoin due to the dramatic improvement in weapons technology to asymptotically project power with relatively little cost. Further, the posture of nuclear forces – and the taught logic of deterrence we rely on to prevent their use – will likely be entirely unchanged by Bitcoin (at least for the foreseeable future).

  Where does this leave us on the question of Bitcoin and war? Unfortunately, I’m not optimistic that it will fundamentally alter the strategic balance of geopolitical forces in such a way as to substantially reduce the likelihood of destructive state conflict. This is no fault of Bitcoin, which promises a great reformation and improvement in many critical aspects of our civilization. Rather, this is merely a statement that, for all its power, Bitcoin is unlikely to change (in our lifetimes, at least) inherent aspects of the human condition, existing as we are on a finite planet, burdened by the frailties of nature and our fraught history.

  Bitcoin is a net good for humanity, and especially good for those states that recognize its virtues before others. Bitcoin fixes a lot of things, and these should be explained clearly and proclaimed proudly, to all who wish to hear. For all its promise however, Bitcoin is unlikely to fix war. Until it does, stay humble and stack sats.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/21/2022 – 21:00

• Beijing Confirms More COVID Cases As Chinese Port Congestion Expected To Worsen
  Beijing Confirms More COVID Cases As Chinese Port Congestion Expected To Worsen

  As the number of days between now and the start of the Winter Games in Beijing continues to shrink, the number of confirmed cases of COVID acknowledged by the CCP continues to grow.

  According to Bloomberg, China’s NHC reported 12 COVID infections Friday, bringing the total confirmed in the capital city to two dozen since last Saturday. Authorities once again blamed the outbreak on imported frozen food and other imported products, lest anybody question the efficacy of the CCP’s “warlike” approach to suppressing the virus. The presence of the omicron variant in the city wasn’t acknowledged until just a few days ago, and the government has been pretty tight-lipped when it comes to confirming new omicron cases.

  Unfortunately for the CCP, the pandemic isn’t the only problem persistently plaguing China’s leaders ahead of the Winter Games. The ructions in China’s property sector still present a major risk to economic stability, even if shares of homebuilders have rebounded from their lows.

  

  Here’s a breakdown of Friday’s infections, and the factors that the NHC has blamed for the infections.

  Friday’s numbers include five people that are not yet showing any symptoms. Two infections were traced back to an earlier patient coming in contact with international mail from Canada that was later found to have been contaminated with the omicron variant. The remaining 10 infections are close contacts of the initial cluster detected earlier this week and driven by the delta variant at a cold storage facility dealing with imported foods, health officials said at a briefing.

  Beijing has emerged as the latest COVID hotspot after China’s health authorities scrambled to contain the spread of the omicron variant in Tianjin, a coastal city near Beijing, and weeks after they locked down Xi’an, a western Chinese city of 13MM that has been locked down since just before Christmas.

  While the outbreaks have interfered with production of semiconductors and other goods in Xi’an and elsewhere, China’s ports have also been struggling with disruptions – and not just the port in Tianjin.

  Bloomberg reported that containers are stacking up at the already backed-up port in Shenzhen. The Yantian terminal at the Shenzen port has been forced to warn clients about the backlog, which is likely going to get worse before it gets better since the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday is right around the corner.

  Ships arriving to the Yantian terminal are delayed by an average seven days and the number of ships arriving from Europe and the U.S. has fallen more than 40% in the past two weeks, the terminal said in a customer advisory Wednesday. That comes on top of the problems Shenzhen port was already facing, with a viral outbreak earlier this month leading to lockdowns of districts, testing of workers and trucking delays at the Yantian and Shekou container terminals.

  The congestion has prompted the Yantian terminal to say it will start restricting the acceptance of containers. To stop operations getting worse, from Friday full containers can only be trucked in four days before vessels are due to berth, the operator said.

  This week is seen as the “peak” week to get goods out of China before the lengthy holiday.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/21/2022 – 20:40

• Durham Vs Horowitz: Tension Over Truth & Consequences Grips FBI's Trump-Russia Reckoning
  Durham Vs Horowitz: Tension Over Truth & Consequences Grips FBI’s Trump-Russia Reckoning

  Authored by Aaron Maté via RealClearInvestigations.com,

  As he documents the role of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in generating false allegations of Trump-Russia collusion, Special Counsel John Durham has also previewed a challenge to the FBI’s claims about how and why its counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign began.

  

  At stake is the completeness of the official reckoning within the U.S. government over the Russiagate scandal – and whether there will be an accounting commensurate with the offense: the abuse of the nation’s highest law enforcement and intelligence powers to damage an opposition presidential candidate turned president, at the behest of his opponent from the governing party he defeated.

  

  Trump-Russia Special Counsel John Durham has made plain his dissent from the findings of …

  

  … DoJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who concluded the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane was properly “predicated.”

  The drama is playing out against the clashing approaches of the two Justice Department officials tasked with scrutinizing the Russia probe’s origins and unearthing any misconduct: Durham, the Sphinx-like prosecutor with a reputation for toughness whose work continues; and Michael Horowitz, the Department of Justice inspector general, whose December 2019 report faulted the FBI’s handling of the Russia probe but nonetheless concluded that it was launched in good faith.

  The bureau’s defenders point to Horowitz’s report to argue that the FBI’s Trump-Russia conspiracy investigation, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane, is untainted despite its extensive use of the discredited Clinton-funded Steele dossier. Though highly critical of the bureau’s use of Christopher Steele’s reports, Horowitz concluded that they “played no role in the Crossfire Hurricane opening,” which he said had met the department’s “low threshold” for opening an investigation.

  But Durham has made plain his dissent. In response to Horowitz’s report, the special counsel announced that his office had “advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.” Durham stressed that, unlike Horowitz, his “investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department” and has instead obtained “information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S.”

  Durham’s office has not described the specific basis for its disagreement. But the Crossfire Hurricane advocates’ defense has a big problem: copious countervailing evidence in the public record – including in Horowitz’s own report. A considerable paper trail points to Steele’s political opposition research playing a greater role in the probe than the FBI has acknowledged:

  • Numerous officials received Steele’s allegations – some meeting with the ex-British intelligence officer himself – and discussed sending them up the FBI chain weeks before July 31, 2016, the Horowitz-endorsed date when the bureau claims it opened the Russia-Trump “collusion” investigation. These encounters call into question the FBI’s claim that Steele played no role in triggering Crossfire Hurricane and that its team only received the dossier weeks after their colleagues, on Sept. 19.

  • The FBI’s own records belie its claims that it decided to launch the Russia probe not because of the dossier, but instead on a vague tip recounting a London barroom conversation with a low-level Trump campaign volunteer, George Papadopoulos. Australian diplomat Alexander Downer’s tip, recorded in bureau records, was that Papadopoulos had merely “suggested” that Russia had made an unspecified “suggestion” of Russian help – a thin basis upon which to investigate an entire presidential campaign.

  • Upon officially opening Crossfire Hurricane on July 31, FBI officials immediately took investigative steps that mirrored the claims in the Steele dossier even though they were supposedly unaware of it. In August, the FBI team opened probes of Trump campaign figures Carter Page, Michael Flynn, and Paul Manafort – all of whom are mentioned in the dossier – based on predicates that are just as flimsy as the Downer-Papadopoulos pretext.

  • The FBI’s claim that Steele played no role in sparking the Trump-Russia probe is further called into question by top bureau officials’ previous false claims about the investigation, including Steele’s role. They not only lied to the public and Congress, but to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

  

  Above, the Horowitz report, which FBI apologists have seized upon because of its dubious headline finding that dossier compiler Christopher Steele “played no role” in sparking the Trump-Russia probe. U.S. Department of Justice

  ‘Definitely of Interest to the Counterintelligence Folks’

  Durham’s November indictment of Igor Danchenko, Steele’s main source, was the final nail in the coffin for the Clinton-funded dossier. But to sympathetic media amplifiers of the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe, its origins were unscathed.

  Horowitz’s report, wrote Mother Jones reporter (and early Steele media contact) David Corn, “concluded that the FBI investigation of Trump-Russia contacts had been legitimately launched” thereby proving that “there was no hoax.”

  In an article attempting to demonstrate “Why the Discredited Dossier Does Not Undercut the Russia Investigation,” Charlie Savage of the New York Times said Horowitz’s report “established” that Steele’s allegations did not reach the Crossfire Hurricane team until Sept. 19, 2016, meaning that “they did not yet know about the dossier” when they launched the probe on July 31.

  But if the Crossfire Hurricane team really did not learn of Steele until Sept. 19, then those leading the Russiagate probe were among the few high-ranking officials in Washington intelligence circles unaware of the dossier.

  The first known Steele-FBI contact about the dossier came on July 5, more than three weeks before the Trump-Russia probe officially launched. Days before, Steele – working for the Clinton campaign via the Washington-based opposition research firm Fusion GPS – contacted Michael Gaeta, the senior FBI agent he had worked with on other matters. Gaeta was then serving in Rome as a legal attaché.

  

  Working for the Clinton campaign via Fusion GPS, opposition researcher Christopher Steele …

  

  … briefed the FBI’s Michael Gaeta months before the bureau says it received Steele’s dossier.

  Steele, Gaeta recalled in congressional testimony, informed him that “I have some really interesting information you need to see … immediately.” Gaeta jumped at the chance: “I said, all right, I will be up there tomorrow,” and immediately caught a flight to London. At Steele’s office on that early-summer day, the former British spy briefed his eager FBI handler on the Trump-Russia conspiracy theories he had generated and handed over a copy of his first “intelligence report.”

  Steele’s allegations did not stay in London, as Gaeta quickly shared them with FBI colleagues. “I couldn’t just sweep it under the rug, couldn’t discount it just on its face,” he told Congress, adding that Steele “was an established source.” On July 12, Gaeta told a colleague in the FBI’s New York field office, the then-assistant special agent in charge, about Steele’s allegations. According to Horowitz — the IG who concluded that Steele “played no role in the Crossfire Hurricane opening” – this agent then informed his superior about the Steele allegations “the same day.” The Steele material, Horowitz’s team was told, was seen by these FBI officials as “something that needs to be handled immediately” and “definitely of interest to the Counterintelligence folks.”

  On July 28, at his FBI colleague’s request, Michael Gaeta passed along copies of the two reports he had received from Steele. As Horowitz later found, the first one (dated June 20, 2016) provided by Steele to Gaeta, would later become “one of four of Steele’s reports that the FBI relied upon to support” its surveillance applications for Carter Page.

  Steele’s conspiracy theories quickly made their way up the FBI chain. According to the inspector general’s report, Gaeta heard from a colleague that high-level officials were already “aware of the reports’ existence,” including at the “Executive Assistant Director (EAD) level” at FBI headquarters in Washington. This occurred, Gaeta told Congress, “on maybe the 1st of August, right around then,” or “either the 31st of July.”

  “I was told by the [assistant special agent in charge] at a very high level, he goes at the EAD level at headquarters they have the reports,” Gaeta said. According to the IG report, Gaeta emailed an FBI supervisor on July 28 to report that Steele had told him that contents of two of his reports “may already be circulating at a ‘high level’ in Washington, D.C.”

  Gaeta also discussed the Steele dossier claims with the legal attaché overseeing his work at the U.S. Embassy in Rome. The unidentified government lawyer told the inspector general that he signed off on Gaeta’s discussions with the New York field office, and also recalled having the “expectation” that “Steele’s reporting” would be provided “to the Counterintelligence Division (CD) at FBI Headquarters within a matter of days.”

  

  Victoria Nuland: Received information directly from Steele “in the middle of July.” 

  

  Bruce Ohr: Made contact with Steele right before the former British spy’s meeting with Gaeta on July 5, and then shortly after.

  Before making the trip to see Steele in London, Gaeta also received the approval of Victoria Nuland, a senior Obama administration State Department official who now serves under President Biden. By her own telling, Nuland’s office then received information directly from Steele “in the middle of July.” Steele, Nuland recalled in a 2018 interview, “passed two to four pages of short points of what he was finding, and our immediate reaction to that was, this is not in our purview. This needs to go to the FBI.”

  Yet another senior U.S. government official also shared Steele’s information with the FBI. It helped that he had a personal connection: Then-senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, whose wife Nellie worked alongside Steele at Fusion GPS, first made contact with Steele right before the former British spy’s meeting with Gaeta on July 5, and then shortly after. This led to a July 30 breakfast between the Ohrs and Steele at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. – one day before Crossfire Hurricane began. At this sit-down, Ohr recalled to Congress, Steele claimed that he had evidence that Russian intelligence “had Donald Trump over a barrel.”

  According to Ohr, “I wanted to provide the information he [Steele] had given me to the FBI.” He immediately reached out to Andrew McCabe, the then-deputy director of the FBI. “I went to his office to provide the information, and Lisa Page was there,” Ohr recalled, referring to the FBI attorney who exchanged anti-Trump text messages with Strzok while both worked on the Trump-Russia probe. “So I provided the information to them.”

  When exactly this pivotal meeting occurred has never been resolved, and all involved have a fuzzy recollection. The transcript of Ohr’s August 2018 House testimony shows him responding “Yes” to a question placing his meeting with McCabe and Page on July 30 – the same day he met Steele, and one day before the Trump-Russia probe officially began. Yet earlier in the deposition, Ohr guessed that he in fact met with McCabe and Page “in August.” When he spoke to the DOJ inspector general, Ohr “did not recall exactly when he contacted McCabe.”

  Despite that testimony, Horowitz instead relied on an entry in Ohr’s calendar to determine the meeting did not take place until Oct. 18. McCabe, who was forced to resign from the department for lying about his contacts with the media, said he believes the meeting occurred in “fall 2016” and “did not remember Ohr calling him to set up the meeting or how it came to be scheduled.”

  

  George Papadopoulos: Crossfire Hurricane’s “predicate” was vague, even exculpatory.

  “Suggested … Some Kind of Suggestion”

  According to the official narrative, while top-ranking FBI officials shared and discussed the Steele dossier with everyone but Crossfire Hurricane team members, the counterintelligence division decided to investigate the Trump’s campaign’s potential ties to Russia on July 31 based on an unrelated tip from Alexander Downer, the Australian diplomat. At a London bar in May, campaign volunteer George Papadopoulos reportedly told Downer that Russia had offered to help the Trump campaign by anonymously releasing information damaging to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Although there was no evidence that the Trump campaign had pursued, received, or used this undefined material, FBI officials deemed this rumor sufficient grounds to investigate the campaign for potential involvement in Russia’s alleged theft of DNC emails published by Wikileaks.

  

  Peter Strzok of the FBI wrote that Papadopoulos somehow “had advance knowledge” about Russian hacking … 

  

  … but bureau records show that Australian diplomat Alexander Downer’s tip about the junior Trump aide contained no such mention.

  “In other words,” Peter Strzok, the senior FBI counterintelligence agent who opened the Trump-Russia probe, wrote in his memoir, “Papadopoulos had somehow learned about the hacking operation before the public did and had advance knowledge of the Russian plan to use that information to hurt Clinton’s campaign. Even the FBI hadn’t known about it at that time.”

  But when the Australian tip that reached the FBI in July 2016 was finally disclosed to the public in December 2019, Papadopoulos’ supposed “advance knowledge” about Russia’s alleged “hacking operation” turned out to be non-existent. The FBI’s tip from Downer contained no mention of the DNC hacking, a Russian interference campaign, or even the stolen emails handed to WikiLeaks. Nor did they even have any trace to suggest that a Russian intermediary had made an overture.

  Instead, according to the FBI Electronic Communication (EC) that opened the Trump-Russia probe, the FBI only heard that Papadopoulos, in his conversation with Downer, “suggested” that “the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia” (emphasis added) that it could “assist” the Trump campaign “with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs. Clinton (and President Obama).”

  The FBI document acknowledged that the nature of the “suggestion” was “unclear” and that the possible Russian help could entail “material acquired publicly” – in other words, not emails hacked from the DNC, which, as Horowitz noted, were “not mentioned in the EC.” The FBI also acknowledged that it had no evidence concerning the Trump camp’s receptivity to the “suggested… suggestion”: It was “unclear how Mr. Trump’s team reacted to the offer,” the EC stated, and that Russia could act “with or without Mr. Trump’s cooperation.” Although Papadopoulos’ October 2017 guilty plea with the Mueller team suggested that he had told Downer about “thousands of emails” obtained by Russia, Downer later stated that the Trump campaign volunteer had made no mention of any stolen emails, and fact “didn’t say what it was” that Russia had on offer.

  In other words, what Strzok wrote in his own book was untrue.

  

  Joseph Mifsud: When it opened its probe, the FBI did not even know that that the purported “suggestion” to Papadopoulos came from this Maltese academic.

  Because Downer’s tip was so thin, the FBI’s predicate was not only vague or even exculpatory, but also contained no indication that the “some kind of suggestion” actually came from the Russian government, or a Russian national, or anyone for that matter. When it opened the probe, the FBI did not even know that that the purported “suggestion” to Papadopoulos came from his conversation with Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic. For his part, Mifsud has denied making any “suggestion” of Russian help to Papadopoulos at all.

  To accept that the FBI’s decision to open the Trump-Russia investigation was well-founded, one has to stipulate that the nation’s premier law enforcement agency decided to investigate a presidential campaign, and then a president, based on a low-level volunteer having “suggested”, during a barroom chat, “some kind of suggestion from Russia” that contained no mention of the alleged Russian hacking or stolen emails that the Trump campaign was supposedly conspiring over. One would also have to accept that the bureau was not influenced by the far more detailed claims of direct Trump-Russia connections – an alleged conspiracy that would form the heart of the investigation – advanced in the widely-circulating Steele dossier.

  

  Their mugs weren’t in post offices, but the FBI targeted them. And it was the Steele dossier that named them, not the bureau’s supposedly probe-originating witness, George Papadopoulos.

  ‘An Insufficient Basis’ for the Probe’s Supposed Predicate

  Adding to the questions surrounding the FBI’s basis for opening a Trump-Russia counterintelligence probe is that, upon doing so, the Crossfire Hurricane team didn’t bother to contact the campaign volunteer whose vague “suggestion” supposedly triggered it. Instead, the FBI expanded the probe to multiple other figures in the Trump orbit. Although no intelligence connected them to Downer’s vague tip, all three shared the distinction of being named as Russia conspirators or assets in the Steele dossier.

  Rather than just focusing on Papadopoulos – who was never wiretapped and not even interviewed until January of 2017 – the FBI quickly opened parallel probes of campaign volunteer Carter Page, campaign adviser Gen. Michael Flynn, and then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. According to Horowitz, Strzok described “the initial investigative objective of Crossfire Hurricane” as an effort “to determine which individuals associated with the Trump campaign may have been in a position to have received the alleged offer of assistance from Russia” (emphasis added) that Papadopoulos had “suggested.”

  The FBI identified Page, Flynn, and Manafort as additional investigative targets, the IG found, not based on any new intelligence but because they had “ties to Russia or a history of travel to Russia.” They relied on a rarely used law – the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires Americans representing foreign governments to disclose these relationships – as the basis for their inquiries. 

  “Lacking any evidence — and admitting such in their own opening document — the team, nevertheless, proceeded to simply speculate who ‘may have’ accepted the Russian offer and subsequently opened up full investigations on four Americans,” Kevin Brock, the former FBI assistant director for intelligence and principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), opined in Congressional testimony in 2020. “This is unconscionable and a direct abuse of FBI authorities.”

  When it comes to Papadopoulos, the FBI “initially considered seeking FISA surveillance of Papadopoulos” but quickly determined that it had “an insufficient basis” to do so,  Horowitz found. But if the FBI felt that it had “an insufficient basis” to spy on Papadopoulos, how could the FBI deem him to be a sufficient basis for investigating and spying on members of the campaign that he worked for?

  

  Igor Danchenko, dossier fabulist: The FBI was deceptive about him, and much more.

  On Steele, a Pattern of FBI ‘Factual Misstatements and Omissions’

  Although Horowitz took the FBI at its word that Steele played no role in triggering Crossfire Hurricane, he did so after documenting multiple instances of FBI lies – including about Steele’s role in the probe.

  When the FBI used the Steele dossier to seek surveillance warrants on Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page, the bureau made 17 “factual misstatements and omissions” to the FISA court, Inspector General Horowitz found in his December 2019 report.

  These abuses included embellishing Steele’s established reliability as an FBI source; omitting information that undermined the credibility of Steele’s main source, Igor Danchenko, and the fanciful claims he told Steele about prostitutes and billion dollar bribes; concealing that Steele was a source for a Yahoo News article that the FBI also cited as source material; omitting that both Page and Papadopoulos had made exonerating statements to FBI informants; and, most notably, omitting that the Clinton campaign was paying for Steele’s services. The FISA court concurred with Horowitz, invalidating two of the four Page surveillance warrants on the basis of the FBI’s “material misstatements.”

  When the FBI briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee on its use of the Steele dossier in 2018, it told similar falsehoods while presenting the Clinton contractor as credible. According to the FBI’s prepared talking points, the Senate was erroneously told that Steele’s main source Danchenko “did not cite any significant concerns with the way his reporting was characterized in the dossier.” Danchenko, the FBI additionally claimed, also “maintains trusted relationships with individuals who are capable of reporting on the material he collected for Steele.” The FBI also said that its discussions with Danchenko “confirm that the dossier was not fabricated by Steele.”

  But the FBI concealed – just as it did with the FISA court – that Danchenko had in fact told its agents that corroboration for the dossier’s claim was “zero”; that he “has no idea” where claims sourced to him came from; and that the Russia-Trump rumors he passed along to Steele came from “word of mouth and hearsay” and “conversation that [he] had with friends over beers” that should be taken with “a grain of salt.”

  When the FBI’s deceptive reliance on Steele was brought to light in a memo from then-House intelligence chairman Rep. Devin Nunes in early 2018, the FBI fought to prevent its release. Moreover, the FBI resorted to more deception: In an explosive Jan. 31 statement aimed at thwarting the Nunes memo’s release, the FBI claimed that it had “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

  The FBI’s tactic failed, and the memo was released two days later. When the first of the FBI’s Carter Page warrants was declassified in July 2018, it showed that the only material omissions of fact were made by the FBI. The FBI told the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court  that it “believes that [Russia’s] efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with” the Trump campaign. Its source for this belief was Steele, whom it described as “Source #1” and “credible” – all while omitting that the Clinton campaign was footing the bill.

  In addition, unidentified intelligence and law enforcement officials went out of their way to bolster Steele’s image via anonymous leaks to credulous news outlets. “U.S. investigators corroborate some aspects of the Russia dossier,” a CNN headline proclaimed in February 2017, weeks after the dossier’s publication. The FBI is “continuing to chase down stuff from the dossier, and, at its core, a lot of it is bearing out,” an unidentified “intelligence official” told The New Yorker later that month.

  The FBI’s faith in Steele extended to sharing classified information with him. According to Horowitz, at an October 2016 meeting in Rome, FBI agents gave Steele a “general overview” of Crossfire Hurricane, including its then-secret probes of Manafort, Page, Flynn, and Papadopoulos. The FBI was so eager to enlist Steele that it offered to pay him $15,000 “just for attending” the Rome meeting and a “significantly” greater amount if he could collect more information.

  This early FBI enthusiasm for Steele – and lengthy record of lying about it — is hard to square with the bureau’s subsequent claims that he only played a minor role.

  Durham’s Dissent Could Become a Political Flashpoint

  Despite uncovering FBI deceptions, Horowitz acknowledged that he was relying largely on the word of the officials he was investigating. “We did not find information in FBI or Department ECs [Electronic Communications], emails, or other documents, or through witness testimony, indicating that any information other than the [Friendly Foreign Government] information” – Australia’s tip from Downer — “was relied upon to predicate the opening of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” his report states.

  As his dissenting statement made clear, Durham is not limited to one department nor to its employees’ voluntary testimony.

  Durham’s grand juries have already yielded indictments of two Clinton campaign-tied operatives for deceptive attempts to influence the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe. That Horowitz has already uncovered so many inconsistencies in the FBI’s account – and that Durham has gone out of his way to question the FBI predication that Horowitz accepted – suggests that the Steele dossier and the Alfa Bank “secret hotline” story are far from the only fraudulent Trump-Russia activity in Durham’s sights.

  If Durham does unearth additional evidence that the FBI did not launch the Trump-Russia probe in the way that it claims, then that would be yet another devastating revelation for a bureau that has already been caught relying on Clinton-funded disinformation and lying about it. Given how hard the FBI and Democratic Party allies have fought to shield this conduct from scrutiny, Durham’s probe could become a major political flashpoint as his probe reaches its final months and hones in on its final targets.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/21/2022 – 20:20

• China Says It Chased US Warship Out Of Its "Territorial Waters"
  China Says It Chased US Warship Out Of Its “Territorial Waters”

  China says it chased a US warship out of its territorial waters on Thursday, near the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea. 

  The Southern Theatre Command of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) accused the USS Benfold of “illegally” sailing into its waters without permission, resulting in PLA naval and air forces tracking the ship and warning it away. A US Navy statement pushed back on the claim, saying that China’s expanding assertions of sovereignty around the islands “pose a serious threat to the freedom of the seas.”

  

  These same islands in the South China Sea have seen the Chinese military establish island fortifications, meant to expand Beijing’s territorial reach. This week the US Navy has appeared to test these claims of Chinese sovereignty over the region.

  Beijing has further sought to impose new maritime identification rules within the past months, aimed at shoring up its claims, as CNN previously described: 

  Beijing wants foreign vessels to give notice before entering “Chinese territorial waters,” providing maritime authorities with detailed information — including the ship’s name, call sign, current position, next port of call and estimated time of arrival.

  It may sound like a reasonable enough request, especially if the ship is carrying hazardous goods, that is until you consider what constitutes “Chinese territorial waters.”

  It’s the second such incident between the Benfold and PLA navy in the last six months. But this instance has further involved China seeking to enforce its new identification laws.

  The PLA’s interpretation of events was as follows: 

  Senior Col.Tian Junli, spokesperson of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theater Command, said in a statement released on the microsite Weibo that “the actions of the U.S. side have seriously violated China’s sovereignty and security.”

  The latest event “is another cast-iron proof that it (the United States) is pursuing navigational hegemony and militarizing the South China Sea,” the statement read.

  “The PLA Southern Theater organized naval and air forces to track and monitor and warned them to leave,” it added.

  “We solemnly demand that the U.S. side immediately stop such provocative actions, otherwise it will bear the serious consequences of unforeseen events,” the PLA added in its statement.

  

  The US Navy 7th Fleet vehemently rejected Beijing’s assertions, calling them “false”.

  “USS Benfold conducted this FONOP in accordance with international law,” the US side said. “The operation reflects our commitment to uphold freedom of navigation and lawful uses of the sea as a principle.” The US Navy added that its ‘freedom of navigation’ exercises will continue: “Nothing PRC (People’s Republic of China) says otherwise will deter us.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/21/2022 – 20:00

• Scientists Instrumental To COVID-19 'Natural Origins' Narrative Received Over $50 Million In NIAID Funding In 2020-2021
  Scientists Instrumental To COVID-19 ‘Natural Origins’ Narrative Received Over $50 Million In NIAID Funding In 2020-2021

  Authored by Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Four prominent scientists who played key roles in shaping the public narrative around the origin of COVID-19 received substantial increases in grant money from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, in the subsequent two years, a review of funding data by The Epoch Times has found.

  

  Three of these scientists—Kristian Andersen, Robert Garry, and Michael Farzan—were advisers to a teleconference organized by Fauci held on Feb. 1, 2020, in response to increasing public questions about the origin of the virus.

  The scientists were also instrumental in the publication of Proximal Origin, a highly influential paper that promoted a natural origins theory for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and has been frequently cited by the government and media.

  Emails released under Freedom of Information Act requests, showed that the scientists had told the senior members of Fauci’s teleconference that they were 60 to 80 percent sure that COVID-19 had come out of a lab.

  

  Notably, despite their private concerns about the origin of the virus, the first draft of Proximal Origin was completed on the same day as the teleconference. Andersen and Garry were co-authors of Proximal Origin and Farzan was acknowledged in the Nature version of Proximal Origin for his participatory discussions in the article’s creation.

  Additionally, Fauci’s NIAID provided a substantial increase in funding to EcoHealth’s Peter Daszak, through whom NIAID had funded controversial gain-of-function coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

  Some of these funding amounts have continued through 2021—and one of the newest grants will continue through at least 2025.

  A significant portion of the funding increase for Daszak, as well as for Andersen and Garry, was provided through NIAID’s creation of the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases (CREID).

  The program, which was originally referred to as Emerging Infectious Diseases Research Centers (EIDRCs) during the early planning stages in 2019, was formally announced under a new name on Aug. 27, 2020. It is not known why the program was initially delayed or why it was renamed.

  The new initiative, described as a global network that involves “multidisciplinary investigations into how and where viruses and other pathogens emerge from wildlife and spillover to cause disease in people,” provided eleven new grants totaling $17 million of new funding in the first year and $82 million in total funding across five years.

  

  Andersen and Garry were the co-recipients of a new $8.9 million 5-year grant made under the CREID initiative that established the West African Research Network for Infectious Diseases (WARN-ID). Daszak was the recipient of a new $7.5 million, 5-year CREID grant that established the Emerging Infectious Diseases: South East Asia Research Collaboration Hub (EID-SEARCH). The other participants of the NIAID CREID program can be found here.

  Notably, although the creation of CREID was not publicly announced until Aug. 27, 2020, the Award Notice Date for the grants to Andersen and Garry are listed as May 21, 2020. The CREID grant to Daszak lists an Award Notice Date of June 17, 2020. The timing of Daszak’s grant is particularly noteworthy as it came shortly after President Donald Trump had revoked Daszak’s previous grant from Fauci’s NIAID in April 2020 due to Daszak’s entanglements with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

  Andersen, who had privately told Fauci on Jan. 31, 2020, that the virus “looked engineered,” but later helped spearhead Fauci’s efforts to promote a natural origins narrative, received a total of $7.4 million in funding in 2020 as compared to $4.5 million in grant proceeds in 2019. Andersen’s total grant funding increased to nearly $9 million in 2021. The new CREID grants (co-awarded with Garry) accounted for approximately $1.9 million of his 2020 grant proceeds and $2 million of his grant proceeds in 2021. Included in Andersen’s 2021 figure is a $266,250 CREID grant that was made to Andersen but did not include Garry as a co-recipient.

  While it is not known at this point whether there was a connection between the increased funding and the scientists’ involvement in shaping the public natural origins narrative, these new revelations raise an obvious question: How is it that among the thousands of scientists eligible to participate in the much-desired funding from the eleven grants provided by Fauci’s new $82 million CREID initiative, three of those chosen happened to be the same individuals who had led the way in promoting Fauci’s natural origins narrative—despite their private concerns that the virus had been created in a lab.

  

  During the Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference, Andersen claimed to be “60 to 70 percent sure the virus came from a laboratory.” One of Andersen’s Proximal Origin co-authors, Edward Holmes, put that figure even higher, at “80 percent.”

  Garry, who told the senior members of Fauci’s teleconference group that he “really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario where you get from the bat virus” to SARS-CoV-2, received $7 million in NIAID grants in 2020 as compared to $5.7 million in 2019. Garry also received $6.6 million in grants in 2021. The new CREID grant (co-awarded with Andersen) accounted for approximately $1.9 million of his 2020 grant proceeds and $1.8 million of his grant proceeds in 2021.

  During the Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference, Garry cited the remarkable sequences of mutations that would have to occur for SARS-CoV-2 to arise naturally, telling the group, “I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature.” However, Garry noted that a lab-created virus would easily explain the virus data he was seeing, telling Fauci’s group that “in the lab, it would be easy to generate the perfect 12 base insert that you wanted.”

  Notably, Garry recently admitted in written correspondence with The Intercept that he had been advised not to discuss a lab leak in the Proximal Origin paper, stating, “The major feedback we got from the Feb 1 teleconference was: 1. Don’t try to write a paper at all—it’s unnecessary or 2. If you do write it, don’t mention a lab origin as that will just add fuel to the conspiracists.”

  Garry—along with Andersen—must have heeded that directive because on Feb. 1, 2020, the same day as Fauci’s teleconference, both men had helped to complete the first draft of Proximal Origin promoting the idea that the virus had originated in nature. That paper became the media’s and the public health establishment’s go-to evidence for a natural origin for the virus.

  The choice of Andersen as a lead author for Proximal Origin is particularly curious as Andersen had no material experience in researching coronaviruses. His stated focus was related to the Zika virus, Ebola virus, West Nile virus, and Lassa virus. It wasn’t until sometime after the Feb. 1 teleconference that he changed his biography to incorporate SARS-CoV-2.

  

  Proximal Origin was published online on Feb. 16, 2020, and sought to exclude the possibility of a lab leak. The article would prove to be highly influential and has been extensively used by Fauci and media organizations in their promotion of the natural origins narrative.

  Another recipient of funding under the CREID initiative was EcoHealth president Peter Daszak, who received a total of $1.5 million in both 2020 and 2021. Unlike either Andersen or Garry, proceeds from his CREID grant make up the entirety of his listed NIAID grants in both years. By way of comparison, Daszak had received approximately $662,000 in NIAID grant money in 2019. Put another way, Daszak’s post-pandemic funding increased by approximately 130 percent.

  Daszak, who heavily promoted the natural origins narrative, was personally involved in gain-of-function work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which continued until at least April 2020. Most prominently, Daszak authored a 2018 research proposal which details the creation of a virus in a lab that bears a remarkable similarity to the defining features of COVID-19.

  That proposal, dated March 27, 2018, details EcoHealth’s plans, in conjunction with the Wuhan Institute, to create entirely new coronaviruses through the synthetic combination of preexisting virus backbones. It describes how those viruses were going to be made more virulent in humans by the insertion of a furin cleavage site, a feature that distinguishes COVID-19 from all other SARS-related coronaviruses.

  Another scientist who advised the Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference, Michael Farzan, received $9.9 million in grants from Fauci’s NIAID in 2020, followed by another $7.9 million in 2021 and an additional $919,000 at the start of 2022. By comparison, Farzan had received $3.8 million in grant money from NIAID in 2019. Although Farzan received substantial increases in grant funding, none of that money appears to have come under grants provided by the CREID initiative.

  

  Farzan, an immunologist who in 2005 discovered the receptor of the original severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus, had told the senior members of Fauci’s teleconference group in emails that the pandemic likely originated from a lab in which live coronaviruses were passed repeatedly through human-like tissue, accelerating virus mutations with the end result being that one of the mutated viruses may have leaked from the lab. Farzan told Fauci’s group that he placed the likelihood of a leak from a Wuhan lab at 60 to 70 percent.

  But in an Oct. 5, 2021, paper, Farzan appeared to agree with conclusions put forth in Proximal Origin, when he claimed that a “comparison of the S protein sequences indicates SARS-CoV-2 may have emerged from the recombination between bat and pangolin coronaviruses.” Farzan, like Andersen, works at the Scripps laboratory.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/21/2022 – 19:40

• COVID Won't Stop Global Elites From Hobnobbing In Davos As Economic Forum Set For May
  COVID Won’t Stop Global Elites From Hobnobbing In Davos As Economic Forum Set For May

  We doubt anybody was surprised when the “climate-conscious” organizers of the World Economic Forum postponed the annual gathering in Davos for the second year in a row (last year’s event was ultimately canceled after an unsuccessful attempt at moving it).

  And in a sign of just how important the Alpine confab is for the business and political elites who actually run the world to see each other face-to-face (instead of virtually in the metaverse like they’re doing this week), the WEF has just released a statement affirming that this year’s event will eventually take place…so long as all safety precautions can be taken.

  Right now, the tentative dates are May 22-26, according to a statement emailed to members that was obtained by Bloomberg.

  Though we can’t say for sure what the COVID numbers will look like then, the fact that it’s only a few months away suggests the elites are ready to return to “normally” living their lives – even if some of their restrictions on businesses and socializing remain intact.

  However, while the letter focused on the “safety” factor, there’s also the more important question of optics. After all, last year’s event was canceled because politicians and billionaires couldn’t be seen hob-nobbing without masks and social distancing. As two year’s worth of scandals featuring a rotating cast of politicians, public servants and even the chairman of a certain Swiss bank, can attest: the elites have largely ignored the restrictions they found unpalatable (even if they tried to hide that fact). But clearly that has grown tiring, so they’re ready to return to doing it all out in the open.

  With the likes of Bill Gates and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla already trumpeting the notion that life will likely return to “normal” after the omicron wave subsides, the justification for holding the event in Singapore or some other emerging metropolis has already been laid.

  But why must Davos go on? We’re pretty sure if you ask “the elites” who attend every year, they would be more than happy to tell you (for better or worse).

  The World Economic Forum’s Great Narrative Conference: “The good news is the elite across the world trust each other more and more… the bad news is that the majority of people trusted that elite less…” pic.twitter.com/c4I4zlew1p

  — James Lindsay, watching narratives crumble (@ConceptualJames) January 21, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Professor Ngaire Woods of Oxford University (which regards itself as an “elite” institution of higher learning) offers a surprisingly candid explanation of this dynamic in a viral clip from a few years back.

  “At Davos a few years ago, the Edelman Survey showed us that the good news is that the elite across the world trust each other more and more, so we can come together and design and do beautiful things together. The bad news is that in every single country they were polling, the majority of the people trusted the elite less.”

  If there was ever an example of ‘saying the quiet part out loud’, this is it. In just a couple of sentences, Woods manages to aptly convey the “elites” mindset in a way that the proles can understand.

  Unfortunately for “the elites”, the 2021 version of the survey Woods is referencing shows that not much has changed. In fact, public trust in “elite” institutions has only continued to deteriorate during the pandemic, as the 2021 survey shows.

  

  Maybe now you can understand why they’re all just itching to get together and hash this out behind the scenes – no matter how much carbon dioxide their private jets spew into the atmosphere.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/21/2022 – 19:20

• This Is Your Last Chance, Part 2
  This Is Your Last Chance, Part 2

  Authored by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic,

  Read Part 1 here…

  

  Supposedly collectivists will reap the rewards of the only things they produce—destruction and death. After the collapse, a global collectivist government will replace the current multiplicity of collectivist governments. Most of the collapse’s survivors will become slaves living on subsistence doled out by the small aristocracy that will rule the planet. The real work will be done by artificially intelligent machines. The slaves will be pacified chemically and electronically through ubiquitous virtual reality technologies and monitored ceaselessly while the aristocrats live in unimaginable splendor. Those who resist pacification and enslavement will be “corrected,” or if that fails, murdered.

  This is simply a straight line projection of the present and recent past that ignores a fully evident counter-trend still gathering steam. After a centuries-long, bull-market run, government as an institution has topped out. The plans and predictions of the global totalitarians are the overconfident rationalizations of newly minted millionaires at the top of bull markets—the “permanently high plateau” in 1929, the “new economy” in 2000, “house prices only go up” in 2007, and “the Fed’s got our backs” now.

  We already have shining examples of totalitarian collectivist failure in really big countries with lots of people—the Soviet Union and Communist China. The former collapsed after tens of millions died, the latter made a mid-course correction towards more freedom after tens of millions died.

  Blithering idiots attribute those failures to incomplete control by the totalitarians or claim collectivism can only work when the whole world is completely enslaved. They ignore the core quandary of collectivist control—it produces nothing. Collectivist governments steal, they don’t produce. A global collectivist government will produce exactly what the current multiplicity of collectivist governments produce: nothing. Yet, this government will supposedly build the world back better from the ashes of financial, economic, and political collapse.

  Collectivists have perfected a demand management technique that obscures but does not solve the productive inability of the economic systems over which they presided: murder a lot of people. People are producers so production shrinks faster than populations, exacerbated by the collectivists’ unerring ability to kill the most productive people. Today’s collectivist killers plan to use the same demand management technique, but this time AI machines will make up the shortfall.

  Current AI technology isn’t there yet but somehow a slave society will produce the innovations necessary to get it up to snuff. The absurdity of this presumption is captured in the contradiction in terms that will supposedly fill the gap: state science. State science is the approved propaganda of the moment propagated by state functionaries and cohorts mislabelled as scientists—for instance the rampant convolutions, contortions, corrections, and prevarications that characterize the Covid travesty, climate change, and green energy.

  As for slavery, Alexis de Tocqueville had the last word on its economics in 1835.

  It is true that in Kentucky the planters are not obliged to pay the slaves whom they employ, but the derive small profits from their labor, while the wages paid to free workmen would be returned with interest in the value of their services. The free workman is paid but he does his work quicker than the the slave; and rapidity of execution is one of the great elements of economy. The white sells his services, but they are purchased only when they may be useful; the black can claim no remuneration for his toil, but the expense of his maintenance is perpetual; he must be supported in his old age as well as in manhood, in his profitless infancy as well as in the productive years of youth, in sickness as well as in health. Payment must equally be made in order to obtain the services of either class of men: the free workman receives his wages in money; the slave in education, in food, in care, and in clothing. The money which a master spends in the maintenance of his slaves goes gradually and in detail, so that it is scarcely perceived; the salary of the free workman is paid in a round sum and appears to enrich only him who receives it; but in the end the slave has cost more than the free servant, and his labor is less productive.

  Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume One, 1835

  The slaves will own nothing because they’ll produce next to nothing. It’s doubtful they’ll be any happier with that state of affairs than slaves have been in the past.

  Turning again to the historical record, the accomplishments of state science and industry are an almost undetectable molehill compared to the Everest of innovations and wealth flowing from free scientific inquiry and production. Picking through this meager molehill, one finds that many state “accomplishments” are merely new and improved ways to kill people.

  Setting aside straight line projections, what’s actually coming is a history’s greatest trend change: total financial, economic, intellectual, and moral collapse. The staggering sum of global debt, unfunded liabilities, and derivatives is in the quadrillions, a double-digit multiple of global production. The numbers are so large and opaque that a more precise estimate for that multiple cannot be derived. Every asset and stream of income is already pledged as collateral—often several times—or will be de facto collateral as governments’ bankruptcies and rapacity mount; they’ll steal whatever they can get their hands on. What most of the world reckons as wealth is somebody’s debt or equity, so insolvency will quickly work its way through the daisy chain. So much for financialization.

  Like financial and economic collapse, intellectual and moral collapse will center on governments. Billions of people indoctrinated in some version of statist dogma will look to governments as the solution for the government-created apocalypse. Courtier intellectuals, media lights, corporate shills, and other minions and toadies will be scurrying like cockroaches in a filthy kitchen when the lights are turned on. Their voluminous output of putrid, state worshipping dreck will have the same value as fiat debt and currencies.

  Today’s “thought leaders” are circling the drain. They’re on the wrong side of history and they’ll take billions of devout believers in government omniscience and omnipotence with them. Fat cat crony collectivist corporations all the way down to those subsisting on some form of state-granted transfer payments will find the government teat withered and barren. The delusory notion that bankrupt governments can provide universal basic incomes will be treated with the universal derision it deserves.

  Government has been collapsing under its own weight for decades. If one were to graph its overall strength, the U.S. government at the end of World War II was peak government—the U.S. empire was at its unchallenged economic, political, and military apex. Vietnam, Nixon’s abandonment of the gold standard, the fall of the USSR, the war on terror, the Patriot Act, and the Covid insanity would mark some of the downward inflection points since.

  History will probably look back on the Biden camarilla’s fraudulent ascension to power as the final sharp break, the demarcation of the vertiginous crash. It’s hard to imagine that the institution that plays such a huge part in all our lives will simply be rubble amidst the chaos and ruins, but few people foresaw the end of the Soviet state either. Straight line projections don’t yield such predictions.

  To those who rule and are trying to implement their global consolidation: This is your last chance to save your own skins. Nothing will stop the collapse, but you can at least abandon your nefarious project and its totalitarian blueprint. It’s your only chance to avoid the Sarlacc pit, and that’s a slim chance indeed. Collapse will focus your victims’ attention on their ruination and your responsibility for it. You’ll be lucky to escape their retribution. Your odious class has always hid your failures and tried to shift the blame, but that game is up.

  As always happens after cataclysms, the survivors will rebuild. The human race is a hardy bunch. With previous equity, debt and its corresponding credit assets wiped out, and many real assets destroyed in the mayhem and chaos, there will be little capital to fund their efforts. Capital will be earned and rebuilt the old fashioned way—consumption less than production generating savings invested in enterprises whose returns compound the savings.

  With governments either broke or wiped out, emergent groups in smaller geographic areas will have to look to their own resources for protection. On the other hand, they’ll be unencumbered by the confiscatory taxes, stifling laws and regulations, rampant corruption, Big Brother surveillance, perpetual violence, and general idiocy we now take for granted among governments.

  There will be a decentralized multiplicity of new political arrangements and subdivisions, from chaotic black holes to well-ordered enclaves. The success of the latter will be due to the freedom they embrace, the individual rights they protect, and their ability to defend their enclaves. New industries, technologies, modes of commerce, and ways of life will emerge. This will be the true great reset, not the Klaus Schwab version, which only recycles failed concepts of centralized power and collective subjugation on a larger scale.

  Brace for impact, the collapse is well underway and will soon hit its inflection point, if it hasn’t already. It will be a test of character unlike anything we’ve faced before. It was Jabba the Hut and his creepy cohorts—Planet Tatooine’s establishment—who were blown to smithereens and cast into the Sarlacc Pit. Our enemies’ greatest weakness: the arrogant stupidity of evil and the crumbling bulwark of lies behind which it hides. These are the allies of Samuel Adams’, “irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.” Our greatest weapon: the magnificently defiant human spirit that stands on the plank above the abyss and shouts: “Jabba, this is your last chance, free us or die!”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/21/2022 – 19:00

• Pennsylvania Middle School Teacher Caught In Photo Taping Mask To Student's Face
  Pennsylvania Middle School Teacher Caught In Photo Taping Mask To Student’s Face

  A teacher at North Penn School District in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania has come under fire after photos leaked her physically taping a mask to a small child’s face during school hours.

  The photo has been shared “thousands” of times on social media and it shows the masked teacher putting what appears to be masking tape on the side of a small child’s black mask, while the child sits in the classroom in front of his laptop.

  Officials from the Montgomery County school district confirmed that the photo had been taken in one of their classrooms, according to the Courier Times. 

  Former candidate for Florida’s 3rd Congressional District, Chuck Callesto brought attention to the image on his Twitter account, where he has almost 300,000 followers. 

  “Teacher at Pennsylvania’s Pennfield Middle School caught taping mask to young child’s face in class,” he wrote.

  

  “An image taken in one of our classrooms last week and circulating on social media does not represent the universal values that the North Penn School District strives to instill in both our students and staff,” the district’s statement read this week.

  North Penn School District continued: “After an immediate investigation, it was determined that while the incident was isolated and no malice was intended, the actions of the teacher were entirely inappropriate and unacceptable, no matter the context. We understand that the act of taping a mask to a student’s face is concerning to many and apologize that it occurred. The matter is serious and it is being addressed with the employee.”

  North Penn Stronger Together, a local Facebook group of parents, encouraged them to speak up at the next school board meeting: “Pro-mask or anti-mask, I hope we can all agree that taping masks to children’s faces crosses the LINE. This was not a joke for the child or the parents.”

  It is still unknown who took the photo or who wound up releasing it on social media, the report says. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/21/2022 – 18:40

• Luongo: How Scared Of November Are The Democrats?
  Luongo: How Scared Of November Are The Democrats?

  Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

  Since the day she announced she wouldn’t be running for re-election in 2020 I knew Tulsi Gabbard was distancing herself from the Democratic Party for a potential Presidential run in 2024.  

  

  Gabbard is supposed to be everything the Democrats want.  A strong, ‘progressive’ female of ‘color’ who backed Bernie Sanders’ runs for the nomination, implying she’s a useful Commie.  She was groomed early on as a WEF Future Leader and put on important House Committees which landed her default invitations to CFR meetings, while also being a member of the Democratic National Committee.

  It was clear she was being schmoozed by the DNC and Davos to become a major player from the moment she was first elected to Congress in 2012. 

  But something happened on the way to Gabbard’s ascension to the top of the U.S. political scene, her conscience got the better of her.  I’ve followed Gabbard for years and watched her carefully, knowing full well about her past associations with Davos.

  Now, for the New Statesman to run a schlocky piece about her as a GOP Dark Horse last week at a pivotal moment in the shifts in Congress against the Democrats’ domestic policy is telling of just how scared the Democrats and Davos are of the 2024 vote getting split along populist lines.

  She’s fostered a cult of personality among her supporters, who either refuse to acknowledge that Gabbard holds right-wing positions or, more often, go on to adopt those positions themselves. Lately, Gabbard’s pivot to cancel-culture pundit, complete with undertones of worries about anti-white “racism”, has inspired her followers to take on the same pet issues. They’ve gone from iconoclastic left-leaning upstarts to “American patriots” without a blink. 

  And here I thought she was a Davos stalking horse to lead stupid libertarians away from the GOP because she’s hawt and anti-war?

  It gets so confusing to keep the narrative straight anymore, but, asking for consistency from the loony left is like asking Joe Biden to remember what he had for breakfast yesterday,

  The rest of the article is nothing more than a hit piece to smear Gabbard through guilt-by-association to keep control over the soccer mom set from jumping from the sinking ship that is the Democratic Party. It’s that same ship Gabbard was two years ahead of everyone else in leaving I remind you.

  The Populism Problem is that it’s Popular

  Remember, folks, populists are the new Nazis in the New Normal and everyone not ‘down with the Commintern’ has to be painted with that brush as often as possible.

  The Department of Justice just told us this is the case. They’ve created a new specialized unit to combat ‘Domestic Terrorism’ which amounts to spending non-existent tax money on investigating and intimidating pretty much anyone reading this blog post.

  This response from the DoJ is just part of the fallout from the false flag operation that was January 6th, 2021.  Even a milquetoast like Jonathan Turley can see what’s happening here and is now concerned about it.

  The Democrats know they have zero chance of retaining the House or the Senate in the fall and what they are doing now is using 1/6 as the means by which to limit who can and cannot run for office this fall and beyond.

  If you can’t win at the ballot box then create a permanent arm of the bureaucracy to stifle dissent.  It’s the new version of “nuts and sluts,” folks.   I wrote about this during the Kavanaugh hearings.

  “Nuts and Sluts” is easy to understand.  Simply accuse the person you want to destroy of being either crazy (the definition of which shifts with whatever is the political trigger issue of the day) or a sexual deviant.

  This technique works because it triggers most people’s Disgust Circuit, a term created by Mark Schaller as part of what he calls the Behavioral Immune System and popularized by Johnathan Haidt.

  The disgust circuit is also easy to understand.

  It is the limit at which behavior in others triggers our gut-level outrage and we recoil with disgust.

  So, today there are multiple political issues conflated to create one big tent under which to house all the challengers to Davos and the demons running the DNC. From being unvaccinated against COVID-9/11, supporting Trump still, to questioning any part of the benevolent government’s narratives about race, sex, COVID-9/11, election fraud, false flag operations, Russians, the filibuster etc.

  It doesn’t matter what it is. If Davos is against it and it will hurt the Democrats’ chances this November then you are a dangerous domestic terrorist. Full stop.

  And woe to anyone who strays from the political orthodoxy. They will be denied basic protections under the rule of law, because they are sub-humans who don’t respect civil society enough to enjoy its benefits.

  It’s as clumsy and dangerous as it is insane. But it is also, sadly, reality.

  So, into this mess New Statesman, probably paid for by the Hildebeast herself, runs a hit piece on Gabbard to trigger the disgust circuit in every squishy mid-wit in the burbclaves of the rapidly draining cities of Blue States.

  The main reason they are doing this is to bring charges against Donald Trump so he can’t run again in 2024.  

  But, I also think it’s deeper than that.

  Crying Wolf Creates Natural Narrative Immunity

  Davos is losing the war of the narratives.  Support for 1/6 as some kind of ‘insurrection’ is failing as more people realize this is just another ridiculous bit of divisive politics, the kind which Gabbard has been outspoken about since leaving Congress.

  As they clumsily pivot off COVID-9/11 Davos is in dire need of a new existential threat to society.

  By the fall all they’ll have left in the U.S. is their control over legacy media, which is hemorrhaging audience faster than Germany is burning through its natural gas supplies, and their operatives in the various alphabet agencies.

  They will lose substantial support in Congress as the country now has ‘crisis fatigue’ to the point where even another virus outbreak would get half the effect it got with COVID, regardless of its lethality.

  That’s because they have cried wolf too many times now.  What was a strategy for destroying our confidence in our political system has now morphed quickly into reflexive distrust of everything all politicians say, to the point where it’s impossible to use public health’ as a means to political control.

  It’s early days of this emerging shift in the zeitgeist, but it’s palpable.   I assure you it’s real.

  If my instincts on this are correct then what we’re seeing now with the 180 degree shift away from “OMG Omicron! is teh killarz of all the lil’ childrens!” by Bill Gates and company is a form of political desperation as the mood of the country turns ugly against those that stole more than two years of our lives.

  And there is nothing more indicative of this fear than them running an extended trial balloon on resurrecting the Hildabeast as their savior going forward.  

  And that brings me back to Gabbard.  Remember it was Hillary stealing the nomination in 2016 that pushed Gabbard off the Davos career track.  It’s why she resigned  from the DNC and set her squarely at odds with Hillary.

  Once you cross Hillary there is no going back.  And if Davos is looking to Hillary to try and salvage what’s left of Biden’s first term then they also have to be positioned against her.

  So this article in the New Statesman tells me two things. 

  1) Hillary is definitely in the mix as the Democrats’ Hail Mary because Hillary would have commissioned this piece to keep the Progressives from jumping ship.

  2) Davos is terrified of what comes in 2022, because they may not be able to split the Republican vote come 2024.

  Consistency Sells

  I just can’t see Gabbard now as the Trojan House to fulfill #2. Her past involvement with these folks is what holds lot of people back from supporting her, and I’m more than okay with them remaining skeptical. Trust, but verify and all that.

  But, if anything, looking at the political landscape and her consistently attacking the Democrats on core issues where they have betrayed the country and put it in those terms, she’s more likely to split the Democrats even further. Sanders is done. He played ball, got the paycheck and is now dead to Progressives. These people are turning on AOC now.

  And the purity spiral will only get worse. Ace Clinton strategies Paul Begala is now, right on cue, blaming Democrat voters, because it’s hard to do any self-reflection when you don’t cast one in a mirror.

  Gabbard wants none of that crowd and she’s laying a foundation for a campaign outside of either party that reaches across all the right issues to build a real following.

  That’s the dominant theme in this New Statesman article, fear that there is no hope for their 2024 strategies to be successful. They are all but admitting now they have no chance in 2022 and are hoping with the Fed going on a strong tightening cycle that they can blame the recession and/or financial crisis which emerges on Congressional Republicans.

  If the GOP was smart, as big an ‘if’ if there ever was one, they would begin the process of saying this recession is regrettable but necessary. Embrace it and build on the anger at Brandon for screwing everyone in the wake of COVID.

  They can see Gabbard coming in to pull centrist votes from Hillary (or whomever) back towards the GOP or worse, advocating for real fiscal and foreign policy reform in D.C. as she runs as a kind of John Anderson figure against Jimmy Carter.

  In fact, the more I think about this the more likely John Anderson is the best analogue for her role in 2024.  She’s the sane Democrat who’s interested in practical solutions, pulling in a very important 5-7% of swing voters tired of the outright lying, the destruction of communities and leadership turning a blind eye to violence and the coming rape of those same suburbs by Larry Fink and Blackrock.

  If you go one step further and revisit the actions of FOMC Chair Jerome Powell, the set up is there for him to morph into the second coming of Paul Volcker. The GOP candidate, possibly Ron DeSantis, then becomes the analogue of Ronald Reagan.  

  Gabbard running as an independent siphoning off the centrist Democrats who just can’t pull the lever for a Republican would be enough to ensure there’s no chance of a DNC steal in 2024.

  Anderson got 5% of the vote in 1980.  He ensured that Reagan won states he wouldn’t have otherwise.  With the Libertarian Party fully neutered and stuck in logic traps of their own devising, there’s room for a real, honest populist to build a bipartisan ticket with Gabbard and a libertarian type strong on non-interventionist foreign policy and fiscal reform (read; Social Security and Medicare) that would get a lot of votes.

  It’s what Bernie Sanders promised but never intended to deliver on.

  If Davos keeps pushing for a potential hot war with Russia and/or China, which is still a real possibility, and Biden succumbs to this, or worse, they install Hillary mid-term to pull it off, then a populist of Gabbard’s anti-war but strong patriotic bona fides is a real threat to the future of the DNC long term.

  I find the timing of this article very very interesting as much for that as to what it actually says.  Because what it says is “Fear Tulsi Gabbard.”

  *  *  *

  Join My Patreon if you fear the reapers at the DNC

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  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/21/2022 – 18:20

• "War May Be Necessary": Russian Lawmakers Push For Donbass Independence Recognition
  “War May Be Necessary”: Russian Lawmakers Push For Donbass Independence Recognition

  The speaker of the Russian State Duma is calling for parliamentary consultations over the question of the status of the Donbass region of Ukraine. In a move the West would without doubt see as a huge political provocation, there’s a push among pro-Kremlin lawmakers to formally recognize the independence of the war-torn, Russian speaking region from Ukraine.

  Further, such an action would likely trigger the biggest flare-up in fighting since 2014 and 2015. Reuters reports additionally that “Russian-backed separatists in east Ukraine would expect Russia’s army to fight with them against Ukrainian government forces if Moscow follows through on a parliamentary proposal to recognize their independence, a pro-Kremlin lawmaker said on Thursday.”

  

  Should parliament move forward with such a proposal, it would be subject of Vladimir Putin’s approval, and for now might remain among “options on the table” for dealing with the crisis.

  Alexander Borodai, a Russian law-maker who is among about a dozen now proposing the move to recognize independence, has acknowledged bluntly that war would surely follow: 

  Borodai, a former Donetsk political leader who is now a member of the Russian parliament, said the separatists would look to Russia to help them wrest control of parts of the territory they claim that are now held by Ukrainian forces.

  “In the event of (the republics) being recognized, a war will become a direct necessity,” Borodai told Reuters.

  “Russia would have to take on some security responsibilities” and defend the territories, he said, as it did after recognizing the independence of two breakaway Georgian regions after a 2008 war between Russia and Georgia.

  Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged caution in light of these reports, but admitted it’s under serious consideration. The discussions could also be aimed at building further leverage amid talks with Washington and NATO. After all, the Biden administration on Thursday approved US weapons deliveries to Ukraine via Baltic allies Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.

  Thus the Kremlin appears to be signaling that if the West wants to escalate, it has a ‘nuclear option’ guaranteeing immediate escalation too. Likely Russia will hold off on any kind of independence recognition for now, given that on Friday US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Russian Foreign Ministry Sergey Lavrov in Geneva, where both agreed to continue open dialogue toward de-escalation. 

  

  Russian media accounts of the Friday meeting presented the engagement in a generally positive light, as both sides set out on “a clear path to understanding.” For now it seems the Kremlin got what it wants – namely for the Biden administration to take its demands concerning NATO expansion seriously.

  “Our American colleagues once again tried to put the problems on the Russian-Ukrainian border at the forefront, tried to condition everything else on the need for so-called de-escalation,” Lavrov said immediately following his meeting with Blinken. “But we ended with an agreement that we will be provided with written answers to all our proposals next week”.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/21/2022 – 18:00

• Biden Wanted To Spend $30 Billion On A Civilian Climate Corp In 'Build Back Better'
  Biden Wanted To Spend $30 Billion On A Civilian Climate Corp In ‘Build Back Better’

  Authored by Adam Andrzejewski via RealClearPolicy.com,

  On January 27, 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order (EO) to combat climate change. The EO officially began research into the creation of a Civilian Climate Corps.

  

  The Corps “shall aim to conserve and restore public lands and waters, bolster community resilience, increase reforestation, increase carbon sequestration in the agricultural sector, protect biodiversity, improve access to recreation, and address the changing climate.”

  In 1933, Franklin D Roosevelt created a similar program called the Civilian Conservation Corps. They cut trails, built roads, and solidified infrastructure, and had about 500,000 annual members at its height.

  The CCC lasted until 1942, built 100,000 miles of roads and trails, 318,000 dams, and tens of thousands of bridges, and employed over 3 million citizens over its lifetime. Since then, there have been various smaller decentralized programs like the Corps Network and AmeriCorps, all which received some federal funding, but nothing at the scale of the CCC. President Obama tried to expand AmeriCorps to 100,000 members, but ultimately failed, and its membership was about 75,000.

  In Biden’s Build Back Better proposal, he calls for hiring 300,000 Americans at a cost of anywhere from $10 to $30 billion for his Climate Corps, at a cost of between $40,000 to $70,000 per member.

  That’s low for some Congressional Democrats. Sen. Ed Markey and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez have introduced the Civilian Climate Corps for Jobs and Justice Act, asking for $132 billion for a corps of 1.5 million members. 

  The CCC is currently in Biden’s Build Back Better proposal that passed the House of Representatives on November 19, 2021, and includes about $7 billion for staffing the CCC.

  The bill stalled in the Senate after Sen. Joe Manchin announced he wouldn’t vote for it, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has vowed to call a vote on it again.

  The #WasteOfTheDay is presented by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 01/21/2022 – 17:40

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• Totalitarian Paranoia Run Amok: Pandemics, Lockdowns, & Martial Law
  Totalitarian Paranoia Run Amok: Pandemics, Lockdowns, & Martial Law

  Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “Totalitarian paranoia runs deep in American society, and it now inhabits the highest levels of government.”

  – Professor Henry Giroux

  Once upon a time, there was a government so paranoid about its hold on power that it treated everyone and everything as a threat and a reason to expand its powers. Unfortunately, the citizens of this nation believed everything they were told by their government, and they suffered for it.

  

  When terrorists attacked the country, and the government passed massive laws aimed at paving the way for a surveillance state, the people believed it was done merely to keep them safe. The few who disagreed were labeled traitors.

  When the government waged costly preemptive wars on foreign countries, insisting it was necessary to protect the nation, the citizens believed it. And when the government brought the weapons and tactics of war home to use against the populace, claiming it was just a way to recycle old equipment, the people believed that too. The few who disagreed were labeled unpatriotic.

  When the government spied on its own citizens, claiming they were looking for terrorists hiding among them, the people believed it. And when the government began tracking the citizenry’s movements, monitoring their spending, snooping on their social media, and surveying them about their habits—supposedly in an effort to make their lives more efficient—the people believed that, too. The few who disagreed were labeled paranoid.

  When the government allowed private companies to take over the prison industry and agreed to keep the jails full, justifying it as a cost-saving measure, the people believed them. And when the government started arresting and jailing people for minor infractions, claiming the only way to keep communities safe was to be tough on crime, the people believed that too. The few who disagreed were labeled soft on crime.

  When the government hired crisis actors to take part in disaster drills, never alerting the public to which “disasters” were staged, the people genuinely believed they were under attack. And when the government insisted it needed greater powers to prevent such attacks from happening again, the people believed that too. The few who disagreed were told to shut up or leave the country.

  When the government started carrying out covert military drills around the country, insisting it was necessary to train the troops for foreign combat, most of the people believed them. The few who disagreed, fearing that perhaps all was not what it seemed, were shouted down as conspiracy theorists and quacks.

  When government leaders locked down the nation, claiming it was the only way to prevent an unknown virus from sickening the populace, the people believed them and complied with the mandates and quarantines. The few who resisted or voiced skepticism about the government’s edicts were denounced as selfish and dangerous and silenced on social media.

  When the government expanded its war on terrorism to include domestic terrorists, the people believed that only violent extremists would be targeted. Little did they know that anyone who criticizes the government can be considered an extremist.

  By the time the government began using nationalized police and the military to routinely lockdown the nation, the citizenry had become so acclimated to such states of emergency that they barely even noticed the prison walls that had grown up around them.

  Now every fable has a moral, and the moral of this story is to beware of anyone who urges you to ignore your better instincts and blindly trust that the government has your best interests at heart.

  In other words, if it looks like trouble and it smells like trouble, you can bet there’s trouble afoot.

  Unfortunately, the government has fully succeeded in recalibrating our general distaste for anything that smacks too overtly of tyranny.

  After all, like the proverbial boiling frogs, the government has been gradually acclimating us to the specter of a police state for years now: Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality.

  This is how you prepare a populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.

  

  You don’t scare them by making dramatic changes. Rather, you acclimate them slowly to their prison walls. Persuade the citizenry that their prison walls are merely intended to keep them safe and danger out. Desensitize them to violence, acclimate them to a military presence in their communities, and persuade them that only a militarized government can alter the seemingly hopeless trajectory of the nation.

  It’s happening already.

  The sight of police clad in body armor and gas masks, wielding semiautomatic rifles and escorting an armored vehicle through a crowded street, a scene likened to “a military patrol through a hostile city,” no longer causes alarm among the general populace.

  We’ve allowed ourselves to be acclimated to the occasional lockdown of government buildings, military drills in small towns so that special operations forces can get “realistic military training” in “hostile” territory, and  Live Active Shooter Drill training exercises, carried out at schools, in shopping malls, and on public transit, which can and do fool law enforcement officials, students, teachers and bystanders into thinking it’s a real crisis.

  Still, you can’t say we weren’t warned.

  Back in 2008, an Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report went on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

  In 2009, reports by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced that called on the government to subject right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans to full-fledged, pre-crime surveillance.

  Meanwhile, the government has been amassing an arsenal of military weapons, including hollow point bullets, for use domestically and equipping and training their “troops” for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.

  Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.

  And then there are the military drills that have been taking place on American soil in recent years.

  In the latest “unconventional warfare exercise,” dubbed “Robin Sage,” special forces soldiers will battle seasoned “freedom fighters” in a “realistic” guerrilla war across two dozen North Carolina counties.

  Robin Sage follows on the heels of other such military drills, including Jade Helm, which involved U.S. Army Special Operations Command, the Navy Seals, Air Force Special Operations, Marine Special Operations Command, Marine Expeditionary Units, the 82nd Airborne Division, and other interagency partners.

  According to the government, these planned military exercises are supposed to test and practice unconventional warfare including, but not limited to, guerrilla warfare, subversion, sabotage, intelligence activities, and unconventional assisted recovery.

  The training, known as Realistic Military Training (RMT) because it will be conducted outside of federal property, are carried out on both public and private land, with locations marked as “hostile territory,” permissive, uncertain (leaning friendly), or uncertain (leaning hostile).

  This is psychological warfare at its most sophisticated.

  Add these military exercises onto the list of other troubling developments that have taken place over the past 30 years or more, and suddenly, the overall picture seems that much more sinister: the expansion of the military industrial complex and its influence in Washington DC, the rampant surveillance, the corporate-funded elections and revolving door between lobbyists and elected officials, the militarized police, the loss of our freedoms, the injustice of the courts, the privatized prisons, the school lockdowns, the roadside strip searches, the military drills on domestic soil, the fusion centers and the simultaneous fusing of every branch of law enforcement (federal, state and local), the stockpiling of ammunition by various government agencies, the active shooter drills that are indistinguishable from actual crises, the economy flirting with near collapse, the growing social unrest, the socio-psychological experiments being carried out by government agencies, etc.

  And then you have the government’s Machiavellian schemes for unleashing all manner of dangers on an unsuspecting populace, then demanding additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threats. Almost every national security threat that the government has claimed greater powers in order to fight—all the while undermining the liberties of the American citizenry—has been manufactured in one way or another by the government.

  What we’ve seen play out before us is more than mere totalitarian paranoia run amok.

  What has unfolded over the past few years has been a test to see how well “we the people” have assimilated the government’s lessons in compliance, fear and police state tactics; a test to see how quickly “we the people” will march in lockstep with the government’s dictates, no questions asked; and a test to see how little resistance “we the people” will offer up to the government’s power grabs when made in the name of national security.

  Most critically of all, this has been a test to see whether the Constitution—and our commitment to the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights—could survive a national crisis and true state of emergency.

  We have failed the test abysmally.

  We have also made it way too easy for a government that has been working hard to destabilize to lockdown the nation.

  Mark my words, there’s trouble brewing.

  Better yet, take a look at “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” a Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command.

  The training video is only five minutes long, but it says a lot about the government’s mindset, the way its views the citizenry, and the so-called “problems” that the government must be prepared to address in the near future through the use of martial law.

  Even more troubling, however, is what this military video doesn’t say about the Constitution, about the rights of the citizenry, and about the dangers of locking down the nation and using the military to address political and social problems.

  The training video anticipates that all hell will break loose by 2030—that’s barely eight short years away—but we’re already witnessing a breakdown of society on virtually every front.

  The danger signs are screaming out a message

  The government is anticipating trouble (read: civil unrest), which is code for anything that challenges the government’s authority, wealth and power.

  According to the Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command, the U.S. government is grooming its armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems.

  What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.

  The chilling five-minute training video, obtained by The Intercept through a FOIA request and made available online, paints an ominous picture of the future—a future the military is preparing for—bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have nots.

  And then comes the kicker. Three-and-a-half minutes into the Pentagon’s dystopian vision of “a world of Robert Kaplan-esque urban hellscapes—brutal and anarchic supercities filled with gangs of youth-gone-wild, a restive underclass, criminal syndicates, and bands of malicious hackers,” the ominous voice of the narrator speaks of a need to “drain the swamps.”

  The government wants to use the military to drain the swamps of futuristic urban American cities of “noncombatants and engage the remaining adversaries in high intensity conflict within.” And who are these noncombatants, a military term that refers to civilians who are not engaged in fighting? They are, according to the Pentagon, “adversaries.” They are “threats.”

  They are the “enemy.”

  They are people who don’t support the government, people who live in fast-growing urban communities, people who may be less well-off economically than the government and corporate elite, people who engage in protests, people who are unemployed, people who engage in crime (in keeping with the government’s fast-growing, overly broad definition of what constitutes a crime).

  In other words, in the eyes of the U.S. military, noncombatants are American citizens a.k.a. domestic extremists a.k.a. enemy combatants who must be identified, targeted, detained, contained and, if necessary, eliminated.

  In the future imagined by the Pentagon, any walls and prisons that are built will be used to protect the societal elite—the haves—from the have-nots.

  If you haven’t figured it out already, we the people are the have-nots.

  Suddenly, the events of recent years begin to make sense: the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers.

  The government is systematically locking down the nation and shifting us into martial law.

  This is how you prepare a populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.

  As Nazi Field Marshal Hermann Goering remarked during the Nuremberg trials:

  It is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

  It does indeed work the same in every country.

  It’s time to wake up and stop being deceived by government propaganda.

  Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats.

  As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law. I’m referring to the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.

  Be warned: in the future envisioned by the government, we will not be viewed as Republicans or Democrats. Rather, “we the people” will all be enemies of the state.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/20/2022 – 23:50

• NASA's Curiosity Rover Finds 'Tantalizing' Carbon Signs Of Possible Ancient Life On Mars
  NASA’s Curiosity Rover Finds ‘Tantalizing’ Carbon Signs Of Possible Ancient Life On Mars

  NASA’s Curiosity rover has spent a decade hunting for ancient signs of life on Mars. The rover has collected sedimentary rock samples rich in a type of carbon associated with life on Earth. 

  NASA touted a new study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal that says sediment samples found by Curiosity suggest “unusual carbon signals” that may support one working theory of the possible existence of ancient life. 

  

  “We’re finding things on Mars that are tantalizingly interesting, but we would really need more evidence to say we’ve identified life,” said Paul Mahaffy, who served as the principal investigator of the Sample Analysis at Mars chemistry lab aboard Curiosity until retiring from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in December. 

  “So we’re looking at what else could have caused the carbon signature we’re seeing, if not life,” Mahaffy said. 

  Curiosity landed in Gale Crater on Mars in August 2012 and explored a large hole that likely once held a lake. The crater has exposed ancient rock that the rover has been able to drill into and analyze with an onboard laboratory and beam data back to Earth for scientists to study. 

  Some sediment samples were depleted in carbon, while others were highly enriched. Carbon has two stable isotopes, either carbon 12 or 13. 

  Researchers found half of the samples collected by Curiosity over the decade contained carbon 12. Back on Earth, carbon 12 is used by organisms for metabolic processes and can be interpreted as a possible sign of ancient life. 

  However, carbon cycles on Mars aren’t entirely understood to make that assumption, researchers said. 

  “On Earth, processes that would produce the carbon signal we’re detecting on Mars are biological,” Christopher H. House, lead study author and professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University said. “We have to understand whether the same explanation works for Mars, or if there are other explanations, because Mars is very different.”

  Researchers developed three scenarios to explain the carbon 12 findings. 

  “Three possible explanations are the photolysis of biological methane released from the subsurface, photoreduction of atmospheric CO2, and deposition of cosmic dust during passage through a galactic molecular cloud. All three of these scenarios are unconventional, unlike processes common on Earth.” 

  The rover is set to collect more sediment samples next month and will give researchers another shot to analyze sediment. 

  “This research accomplished a long-standing goal for Mars exploration,” House said. “To measure different carbon isotopes — one of the most important geology tools — from sediment on another habitable world, and it does so by looking at nine years of exploration.”

  If the samples collected are signs of ancient life on Mars. This is good news for Elon Musk, who is trying to build space ships to shuttle thousands of people between Earth and Mars to colonize the planet in the coming decades. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/20/2022 – 23:30

• Energy Limits Are Likely To Push The World Economy Into Recession In 2022
  Energy Limits Are Likely To Push The World Economy Into Recession In 2022

  Authored by Gail Tverberg via OurFiniteWorld.com,

  In my view, there are three ways a growing economy can be sustained:

  1. With a growing supply of cheap-to-produce energy products, matched to the economy’s energy needs.

  2. With growing debt and other indirect promises of future goods and services, such as rising asset prices.

  3. With growing complexity, such as greater mechanization of processes and supply lines that extend around the world.

  All three of these approaches are reaching limits. The empty shelves some of us have been seeing recently are testimony to the fact that complexity is reaching a limit. And the growth in debt looks increasingly like a bubble that can easily be popped, perhaps by rising interest rates.

  In my view, the first item listed is critical at this time: Is the supply of cheap-to-produce energy products growing fast enough to keep the world economy operating and the debt bubble inflated? My analysis suggests that it is not. There are two parts to this problem:

  [a] The cost of producing fossil fuels and delivering them to where they are needed is rising rapidly because of the effects of depletion. This higher cost cannot be passed on to customers, without causing recession. Politicians will act to keep prices low for the benefit of consumers. Ultimately, these low prices will lead to falling production because of inadequate reinvestment to offset depletion.

  [b] Non-fossil fuel energy products are not living up to the expectations of their developers. They are not available when they are needed, where they are needed, at a low enough cost for customers. Electricity prices don’t rise high enough to cover their true cost of production. Subsidies for wind and solar tend to drive nuclear electricity out of business, leaving an electricity situation that is worse, rather than better. Rolling blackouts can be expected to become an increasing problem.

  In this post, I will explore the energy-related issues that are contributing to the recessionary trends that the world economy is facing, starting later in 2022.

  [1] World oil supplies are unlikely to rise very rapidly in 2022 because of depletion and inadequate reinvestment. Even if oil prices rise higher in the first part of 2022, this action cannot offset years of underinvestment.

  

  Figure 1. Crude oil and liquids production quantities through 2020 based on EIA data. “IEA Estimate” adds IEA indicated increases in 2021 and 2022 to historical EIA liquids estimates. Tverberg Estimate relate to crude oil production.

  The IEA, in its Oil Market Report, December 2021, forecasts a 6.4-million-barrel increase in world oil production in 2022 over 2021. Indications through September of 2021 strongly suggest that there was only a small rebound (about 1 million bpd) in the world’s oil production in 2021 compared to 2020. In my view, IEA’s view that liquids production will increase by a huge 6.4 million barrels a day between 2021 and 2022 defies common sense.

  The basic reason why oil production is low is because oil prices have been too low for producers since about 2012. Companies have had to cut back on developing new fields in higher cost areas because oil prices have not been high enough to justify such investments. For example, producers from shale formations could add new wells outside the rapidly depleting “core” regions if the oil price were much higher, perhaps $120 to $150 per barrel. But US WTI oil prices averaged only $57 per barrel in 2019, $39 per barrel in 2020, and $68 per barrel in 2021, so this new investment has not been started.

  Recently, oil prices have been over $80 per barrel, but even this is considered too high by politicians. For example, countries are releasing oil from their strategic oil reserves to try to force oil prices down. The reason why politicians are interested in low oil prices is because if the price of oil rises, both the price of food and the cost of commuting are likely to rise, since oil is used in farming and in commuting. Inflation is likely to become a problem, making citizens unhappy. Wages will go less far, and politicians who allow high oil prices will be voted out of office.

  [2] Natural gas production can be expected to rise by 1.6% in 2022, but this small increase will not be enough to meet the needs of the world economy.

  

  Figure 2. Natural gas production though 2020 based on data from BP’s 2021 Statistical Review of World Energy. For 2020 and 2021, Tverberg estimates reflect increases similar to IEA indications, so only one indication is shown.

  With natural gas production growing at a little less than 2% per year, a major issue is that there is not enough natural gas to “go around.” Natural gas is the smallest of the fossil fuels in quantity. We are depending on its growth to solve many problems, simultaneously:

  • To increase natural gas imports for countries whose own production is declining
  • To provide quick relief from inadequate production by wind turbines and solar panels, whenever such relief is needed
  • To offset declining coal consumption related to a combination of issues (depletion, high pollution, climate change concerns)
  • To help increase world electricity supply, as transportation and other processes are gradually electrified

  Furthermore, the rate at which natural gas supply increases cannot easily be speeded up because (a) the development of new fields, (b) the development of transportation structures (pipeline or Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) ships), and (c) the development of storage facilities all require major upfront expenditures. All of these must be planned years in advance. They require huge amounts of resources of many kinds. The selling price of natural gas must be high enough to cover all of the resource and labor costs. For those familiar with the concept of Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI), the basic problem is that the delivered EROEI falls too low when all of the many parts of the system are considered.

  Storage is extremely important for natural gas because fluctuations tend to occur in the quantity of natural gas the overall system requires. For example, if stored natural gas is available, it can be used when wind turbines are not producing enough electricity. Also, a huge amount of energy is needed in winter to keep homes warm and to keep the lights on. If sufficient natural gas can be stored for months at a time, it can help provide this additional energy.

  As a gas, natural gas is difficult to store. In practice, underground caverns are used for storage, assuming caverns of the right type are available. Trying to build storage, if such caverns are not available, is almost certainly an expensive undertaking. In theory, importing natural gas by pipeline or LNG can transfer the storage problem to LNG producers. This is not a satisfactory solution, however. Without adequate storage available to sellers, this means that natural gas can be extracted for only part of the year and LNG ships can only be used for part of the year. As a result, return on investment is likely to be poor.

  Now, in 2022, we are hitting the issue of very slowly rising natural gas production head-on in many parts of the world. Countries that import natural gas without long-term contracts are facing spiking prices. Countries in Europe and Asia are especially affected. The United States has mostly been isolated from the spiking prices thanks to producing its own natural gas. Also, only a small portion of the natural gas produced by the US is exported (9% in 2020).

  The reason for the small export percentage is because shipping natural gas as LNG tends to be very expensive. Long-distance LNG shipping only makes economic sense if there is a several dollar (or more) price differential between the buyer’s price and the seller’s costs that can be used to cover the high transport costs.

  We now seem to be reaching a period of spiking natural gas prices, especially for counties importing natural gas without long-term contracts. If natural gas prices rise, this will tend to make electricity prices rise because natural gas is often burned to produce electricity. Products made with high-priced electricity will be less competitive in a world market. Individual citizens will become unhappy with their high cost of heat and light.

  High natural gas prices can have very adverse consequences. In areas with high prices, products made using natural gas as a raw material will tend to be squeezed out. One such product is urea, used as a nitrogen fertilizer. With less nitrogen fertilizer available, food production is likely to fall. If food prices rise in response to short supply, consumers will tend to reduce discretionary spending to ensure that there are sufficient funds for food. A reduction in discretionary spending is one way recession starts.

  Inadequate growth in world natural gas production can be expected to hit poor countries especially hard. For example, a recent article mentions LNG suppliers backing out of planned deliveries of LNG to Pakistan, given the high prices available elsewhere. Another article indicates that Kosovo, a poor country in Europe, is experiencing rolling blackouts. Eventually, if natural gas available for export remains limited in supply, electricity blackouts can be expected to spread more widely, to less poor parts of Europe and around the world.

  [3] World coal production can be expected to decline, further pushing the world economy toward recession.

  Figure 3 shows my estimate for world coal production, next to a recent IEA forecast.

  

  Figure 3. Coal production through 2020 based on data from BP’s 2021 Statistical Review of World Energy. “IEA Estimate” adds IEA indicated increases to historical BP coal quantities. Tverberg Estimate provides lower estimates for 2021 and 2022, considering depletion issues.

  Figure 3 shows that world coal consumption has not been rising for about a decade.

  Coal seems to be having the same problem with rising costs as oil. The cost of producing the coal is rising because of depletion, but citizens cannot afford to pay more for end products made with coal, such as electricity, steel and solar panels. Coal producers need higher prices to cover their higher costs, but it becomes increasingly difficult to pass these higher costs on to consumers. This is because politicians want to keep electricity prices low to keep their citizens and businesses happy.

  If the cost of electricity rises, the cost of goods made with high-priced electricity will tend to rise. Businesses will find their sales falling in response to higher prices. In turn, they will tend to lay off workers. This is a recipe for recession, but a slightly different one than the ones mentioned earlier. It also is a good way for politicians not to get re-elected. As a result, politicians will try to hide rising coal costs from customers. For example, laws may be enacted capping electricity prices that can be charged to customers. Because of this, some electricity companies may be forced out of business.

  The decrease in coal production I am showing for 2022 is only 1%, but when this small reduction is combined with the growth problems shown for coal and oil and the rising world population, it means that world coal supplies will be stretched.

  China is the world’s largest coal producer and consumer. A major concern is that the country has serious coal depletion problems. It has experienced rolling blackouts since the fall of 2020. It has tried to encourage its own production by limiting coal imports, thus keeping wholesale coal prices high for local producers. It also limits the extent to which high coal costs can be passed on to electricity customers. As a result, the 2021 profits of electricity companies are expected to be reduced.

  [4] The US may have some untapped coal resources that could be tapped, if there is a plan to ship more natural gas to Europe and other areas in need of the fuel.

  The possibility of additional US coal production occurs because coal production in the US seems to have occurred because of competition from incredibly inexpensive natural gas (Figure 4). To some extent, this low natural gas price results from laws prohibiting oil and gas companies from “flaring” (burning off) natural gas that is too expensive to produce relative to the price it can be sold for. Prohibitions against flaring are a type of mandated subsidy of natural gas production by the oil-producing portion of “Oil & Gas” companies. This required subsidy leads to part of the need for high oil prices, especially for companies drilling in shale formations.

  

  Figure 4. US coal production amounts through 2020 are from BP’s 2021 Statistical Review of World Energy. Amounts for 2021 and 2022 are estimated based on forecasts from EIA’s Short Term Energy Outlook. Natural gas prices are average annual Henry Hub spot prices per million Btus, based on EIA data.

  A major reason why US coal extraction started to decline about 2009 is because a very large amount of shale gas production started becoming available then as a byproduct of oil production from shale. Oil producers were primarily interested in extracting oil because it (hopefully) sold for a high price. Natural gas was a byproduct whose collection was barely economic, given its low selling price. Also, the economy didn’t have uses, such as trucks powered by natural gas, for all of this extra natural gas production. Figure 4 suggests that wholesale natural gas prices dropped by close to half, in response to this extra supply.

  With these low natural gas prices, as well as coal pollution concerns, a significant amount of US electricity production was switched from coal to natural gas. It is my view that this change left coal in the ground, potentially for later use. Thus, if natural gas prices rise again, US coal production could perhaps rise again. The catch, of course, is that many coal-fired electricity-generating plants in the US have been taken out of service. In addition, coal mines have been closed. Any increase in future coal production would likely take place very slowly because of the need for many simultaneous changes.

  [5] On a combined basis, using Tverberg Estimates for 2021 and 2022, fossil fuel production in total takes a step down in 2020 and doesn’t rise much in 2021 and 2022.

  

  Figure 5. Sum of Tverberg Estimates related to oil, coal, and natural gas. Oil includes natural gas liquids but not biofuels. Historical amounts are from BP’s 2021 Statistical Review of World Energy.

  Figure 5 shows that on a combined basis, the overall energy being provided by fossil fuels is likely to remain lower in 2021 and 2022 than it was in 2018 and 2019. This is concerning, because the economy cannot go back to its 2019 level of “openness” and optional travel for sightseers, without a big step up in energy supply, especially for oil.

  This same figure shows that the production of the three fossil fuels is somewhat similar in quantity: Oil is the highest, coal is second, and natural gas comes in third. However, oil shows a step down in 2020’s production from which it has not recovered. Coal shows a smoother pattern of rise and eventual fall. So far, natural gas has mostly been rising, but not very steeply in recent years.

  [6] Alternatives to fossil fuels are not living up to early expectations. Electricity from wind turbines and solar panels is not available when it is needed, requiring a great deal of back-up electricity generated by fossil fuels or nuclear. The total quantity of non-fossil fuel electricity is far too low. A transition now will simply lead to electricity blackouts and recession.

  Figure 6 shows a summary of non-fossil fuel energy production for the years 2000 through 2020, without a projection to 2022. For clarification, wind and solar are part of the electrical renewables category.

  

  Figure 6. World energy production for various categories, based on data from BP’s 2021 Statistical Review of World Energy.

  Figure 6 shows that nuclear electricity production has been declining at the same time that the production of electrical renewables has been increasing. In fact, a significant decrease in nuclear electricity is planned in Europe in 2022. This reduction in nuclear electricity is part of what is causing the concern about electricity supply for Europe for 2022.

  The addition of wind and solar to an electrical grid seems to encourage the closure of nuclear electricity plants, even if they have many years of safe production still ahead of them. This happens because wind and solar are given the subsidy of “going first,” if they happen to have electricity available. Wind and solar may also be subsidized in other ways.

  The net result of this arrangement is that wholesale electricity prices set through competitive markets quite frequently fall too low for other electricity producers (apart from wind and solar). For example, wind and solar electricity that is produced during weekends may be unneeded because many businesses are closed. Electricity produced by wind and solar in the spring and fall may be unneeded because heating and cooling needs tend to be low at these times of the year. Wind and solar electricity providers are not asked to cut back supply because their production is unneeded; instead, low (or negative) prices encourage other electricity producers to cut back supply.

  Nuclear electricity producers are particularly adversely affected by this pricing arrangement because they cannot save money by cutting back their output when wind and solar are over-producing electricity, relative to demand. This strange pricing arrangement leads to unacceptably low profits for many nuclear electricity providers. They may voluntarily choose to be closed. Local governments find that if they want to keep their nuclear electricity producers, they need to subsidize them.

  Wind and solar, with their subsidies, tend to look more profitable to investors, even though they cannot support the economy without a substantial amount of supplementary electricity production from other electricity providers, which, perversely, they are driving out of business through their subsidized pricing structure.

  The fact that wind and solar cannot be depended upon has become increasingly obvious in recent months, as coal, natural gas and electricity prices have spiked in Europe because of low wind production. In theory, coal and natural gas imports should make up the shortfall, at a reasonable price. But total volumes available for import have not been increasing in the quantities that consumers need them to increase. And, as mentioned above, nuclear electricity production is increasingly unavailable as well.

  [7] The total quantity of non-fossil fuel energy supplies is not very large, relative to the quantity of fossil fuel energy. Even if these non-fossil fuel energy supplies increase at a trend rate similar to that in the recent past, they do not make up for the projected fossil fuel production deficit.

  

  Figure 7. Total energy production, based on the fossil fuel estimates in Figure 5 together with non-fossil fuels in Figure 6.

  With respect to anticipated future non-fossil fuel electricity generation, one issue is how much nuclear is being shut off. I would imagine these current closure schedules could change, if countries become aware that they may be facing rolling blackouts without nuclear.

  A second issue is the growing awareness that renewables don’t really work as intended. Why add more if they don’t really work?

  A third issue is new studies suggesting that prices being paid for locally generated electricity may be too generous. Based on such an analysis, California is proposing a major reduction to its payments for renewable-generated electricity, starting July 1, 2022. This type of change could reduce new installations of solar panels on homes in California. Other locations may decide to make similar changes.

  I have shown two estimates of future non-fossil fuel energy supply in Figure 7. The high estimate reflects a 4.5% annual increase in the total supply, in line with recent past increases for the group in total. The lower one assumes that 2021 production is similar to that in 2020 (because of more nuclear being closed, for example). Production for 2022 represents a 5% decrease from 2021’s production.

  Regardless of which assumption is made, growth in non-fossil fuel electricity supply is not very important in the overall total. The world economy is still mostly powered by fossil fuels. The share of non-fossil fuels relative to total energy ranges from 16% to 18% in 2020, based on my low and high estimates.

  [8] The energy narrative we are being told is mostly the narrative that politicians would like us to believe, rather than the narrative that historians and physicists would develop.

  Politicians would like us to believe that we live in a world of everlasting economic growth and that the only thing we should fear is climate change. They base their analyses on models by economists who seem to think that an “invisible hand” will fix all problems. The economy can always grow; enough fossil fuels and other resources will always be available. Governments seem to be able to print money; somehow, this money will be transformed into physical goods and services. With these assumptions, the only problems are distant ones that central banks and carbon taxes can handle.

  The realists are historians and physicists. They tell us that a huge number of past economies have collapsed when their populations attempted to grow at the same time that their resource bases were depleting. These realists tell us that there is a high probability that our current economy will eventually collapse, as well.

  

  Figure 8. The Seneca Cliff by Ugo Bardi

  The general shape that economic growth is likely to take is that of a “Seneca Curve” or “Seneca Cliff.” In the words of Lucius Annaeus Seneca in the first century CE, “Increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.” If we think of the amount graphed as the total quantity of goods and services received by citizens, the amount tends to rise slowly, gradually plateaus and then falls.

  We now seem to be encountering lower energy supply while population continues to rise. It takes energy for any activity that we think of as contributing to GDP to occur. We should not be surprised if we are at the edge of a recession. If we cannot get our energy problems solved, the downturn could be very long-lasting.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/20/2022 – 23:10

• Iran, Russia, China To Hold Joint Naval Drills After Key Putin-Raisi Summit
  Iran, Russia, China To Hold Joint Naval Drills After Key Putin-Raisi Summit

  Russia and Iran have unveiled plans to hold maritime joint naval exercises with China on Friday. The somewhat rare naval drills will take place in the northern Indian Ocean, and is part of a pattern of clearly deepening cooperation between the unlikely allies at a moment each is facing intense pressure from Washington, including US sanctions.

  It’s the third time such drills have taken place between the three powers, with the last taking place Feb.2021. Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency cited a military commander who said the drills are to “strengthen security and its foundations in the region.” Further Iran as called it part of ongoing “anti–piracy operations” and toward ensuring “safe navigation”. 

  Dubbed the 2022 Marine Security Belt, it comes after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi met Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss deepened security, economic, and strategic cooperation.

  

  Commenting on Wednesday’s meeting, regional sources emphasized Raisi’s statements as focused on expelling American influence and interference from the Mideast region:

  Raisi, at the beginning of the meeting, made it clear that there will be no limits to “expanding and developing relations with friendly Russia,” noting that “relations with Russia will develop into strategic ones.” 

  He said, “In light of the policy of the United States and the West, our relations must be stronger,” adding, “We have been confronting the United States with Russia for 40 years.”

  The Iranian president hopes that Iran’s efforts to lift the sanctions off Iran will succeed. 

  “We have presented to our Russian friends a draft of our vision on the strategic agreement between both countries,” he said, explaining that Iran has documents on strategic cooperation that can determine the horizon of this cooperation over a 20-year period.” 

  The deepening ties are sure to rile hawks in Washington – given also in recent years a number of ship seizures in the vital Strait of Hormuz have been cause of soaring tensions in the key oil shipping lane. Russia and China have also stood by Tehran as it negotiations the dropping of US sanctions as part of ongoing JCPOA talks in Vienna.

  Iran’s President has given us an interview – his first with foreign media.

  Ebrahim Raisi told me of big plans with Russia/China, and how any nation that seeks true independence is targeted and demonized by the US.

  Trump’s killing of Suleimani, cyberattacks and more in full intv pic.twitter.com/2cg1nZHm1x

  — Murad Gazdiev (@MuradGazdiev) January 20, 2022

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  Few details of what’s expected in the drills have been given, with US publications describing, “The Iranian military spokesman said both navies from Iran’s armed forces and Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) will take part in the upcoming drills with Russia and China.”

  The report further said “The maneuvers are to include tactical exercises such as rescuing a burning vessel, releasing a hijacked vessel, and shooting at air targets at night.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/20/2022 – 22:50

• Taibbi: Thomas Friedman Roars Back To Form
  Taibbi: Thomas Friedman Roars Back To Form

  Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

  

  Esteemed Yale professor Samuel Moyn tweeted this yesterday, cruelly tagging me and forcing a look at New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s latest:

  Count of metaphors in one column: a whopping thirteen, *none of which have anything to do with each other*. Putin ends up an amputated ex-boyfriend peasant thug eating Ukraine in a tree, killing cows and threatening marriage between bites. @mtaibbi https://t.co/OxQ9wVL0uT

  — Samuel Moyn 🔭 (@samuelmoyn) January 19, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  I met Friedman once, and he was really nice. Moreover he’s clearly tried to rein in (that’s horse imagery) his use of metaphors over the years. However, he slips sometimes. As Professor Moyn notes, “Putin to Ukraine, ‘Marry Me or I’ll Kill You’” is a bad slip, like Ray Milland’s Lost Weekend bad:

  Why is Vladimir Putin threatening to take another bite out of Ukraine, after devouring Crimea in 2014? That is not an easy question to answer because Putin is a one-man psychodrama, with a giant inferiority complex toward America that leaves him always stalking the world with a chip on his shoulder so big it’s amazing he can fit through any door.

  Let’s see: Putin is a modern-day Peter the Great out to restore the glory of Mother Russia. He’s a retired K.G.B. agent who simply refuses to come in from the cold and still sees the C.I.A. under every rock and behind every opponent. He’s America’s ex-boyfriend-from-hell, who refuses to let us ignore him and date other countries, like China — because he always measures his status in the world in relation to us.

  In paragraph one Putin is a biting giant, or giant biter, who stalks the world with a chip on his shoulder so big he only just fits through the huge doors that apparently separate nations (I thought of Richard E. Grant’s talking shoulder-boil in How to Get Ahead in Advertising). In paragraph two Putin starts off as Peter the Great, but a sentence later is Richard Burton (that’s two British actors now), only one who didn’t come in from the cold and “sees the C.I.A. under every rock” (I think the word he’s looking for is “imagines” — see asterisk below).

  Friedman is just getting started: biting-giant, chip-on-his-shouldered, Emperor-Burton-in-a-doorway-Putin is also America’s “ex-boyfriend from hell,” who refuses to let us “date other countries, like China” (we want to date China?) because “he always measures his status in the world in relation to us.”

  This passage made me stop, mentally dropping the images. Friedman seems to be saying Putin is in a perpetual dick-measuring contest with us, but is also our ex-boyfriend, which of course is more than possible (it’s 2022, folks), but did Friedman intend it that way? The guess is he wasn’t going for the wang imagery, in which case he probably wanted to stay away from the word “measure” in the context of a dude with an inferiority complex. On the other hand, the image of a scorned gay giant with micro-wiener dressed as Peter the Great and trapped in a doorway talking to his shoulder-boil is pretty dynamic stuff. I was going with it, heading into this passage:

  If I were a cynic, I’d just tell him to go ahead and take Kyiv because it would become his Kabul, his Afghanistan — but the human costs would be intolerable. Short of that, I’d be very clear: If he wants to come down from the tree in which he’s lodged himself, he’s going to have to jump or build his own ladder. He has completely contrived this crisis, so there should be no give on our part. China is watching — and Taiwan is sweating — everything we do in reaction to Vlad right now.

  Which brings us back to the central question: Vlad, why are you in that tree?

  Not many writers would have the guts to spend multiple opening paragraphs constructing an elaborate image of a giant insecure biting ex-boyfriend who wants to date China, then suddenly introduce the idea that this creature is also stuck in a tree. Worse, Friedman tells him that if he wants to get down, he’s either going to have to jump or “build his own ladder.”

  As to the first point: Putin just a few paragraphs before physically ate Crimea and was “stalking the world with a chip on his shoulder so big it’s amazing he can fit through any door,” so is this a really big tree he’d be jumping out of, or did he shrink? That’s some Alice in Wonderland stuff.

  As to the second point, the “build his own ladder” line almost feels like taunting. Does Putin have tools in the tree? Does he have a saw? If he has a saw, I’m not sure he’d need a ladder to get down, although the logistics of that aren’t obvious, at least not to me. In fact, I’ll send a Bob Ross “Happy Trees University” T-Shirt to the reader who sends in the best diagram or plan for how to get out of a tree with a full set of tools. Just tweet to #FriedmanTreePlan:

  

  Why stop there? I’ll add a Bob Ross Master Paint Set and a Bob Ross Happy Little Trees Ring Toss party game to the person who best sketches or paints the entire Friedman image depicted in this column (tweet to #FriedmanImage). If you’re cocky and thinking that’s no problem, remember we’re only halfway through the piece. Complications lay ahead!

  

  Back to the article: Friedman moves on from the ladder to tell us Taiwan is sweating, before saying, “Which brings us back to the central question: Vlad, why are you in that tree?”

  This is the first time we’re learning the “central” question of the piece is, “Vlad, why are you in that tree?” It’d be a weird transition either way, but a lot less so if he’d just removed the phrase “brings us back,” since we can’t come back to a place we’ve never been. Still, this is classic Friedman, who loves the abrupt switcheroo. I’m reminded of the “Long Bomb” column from ages ago, whose operating metaphor throughout was Bush’s Iraq policy as Hail Mary pass, only to end with it as a “beautifully carved mahogany table” with one leg.

  Speaking of which:

  For Putin, losing Ukraine “is like an amputation,” remarked political scientist Ivan Krastev, chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria. “Putin looks at Ukraine and Belarus as part of Russia’s civilizational and cultural space. He thinks the Ukrainian state is totally artificial and that Ukrainian nationalism is not authentic.”

  The reason Putin has accelerated his Ukraine threat — which I would call “marry me or I will kill you” — is that he knows that under Ukraine’s current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, the process of Ukrainization has accelerated and the Russian language is being pushed out of schools and Russian television out of the media space.

  We’ve now got a giant amputee who’s yelling down at Ukraine from a tree, “Marry me or I’ll kill you!” If he’s using Richard Burton’s voice to shout from up there, I recommend borrowing the commanding tone from the “Hear me for the sake of your soul, which is in the gravest danger!” scene in Becket, which actually is a little like the British version of “We’ll whack them even in the outhouse.” Is it nitpicking to point out the “Marry or die!” command comes just a few paragraphs after he was supposed to be hung up romantically on the United States? Probably. Continuing:

  I don’t weep for Putin. He is the human embodiment of one of the oldest Russian fables: A Russian peasant pleads to God for aid after he sees that his better-off neighbor has just obtained a cow. When God asks the peasant how he can help, the peasant says, “Kill my neighbor’s cow.”

  The last thing that Putin wants is a thriving Ukraine that joins the European Union and develops its people and economy beyond Putin’s underperforming, autocratic Russia. He wants Ukraine to fail, the E.U. to fracture and America to have Donald Trump as president for life so we’ll be in permanent chaos.

  Putin would rather see our cow die than do what it takes to raise a healthy cow of his own. He’s always looking for dignity in all the wrong places. He’s rather pathetic — but also armed and dangerous.

  I always heard a different, funnier version of that fable, in which a typical Soviet person rubs a lamp, producing a genie who offers him a deal: “I’ll grant you any wish, only your neighbor will receive it twice over.” To which the sovok answers, “Pluck out one of my eyes.” But whatever, stipulating this version, Friedman still just called Ukraine “our cow,” a perhaps unintentionally succinct description of the problem from the Slavic point of view. However that, as Friedman would say, is a whole different ball of beans. More importantly: now that Ukraine’s a cow, does he still want to marry it? If so, would he be standing on one leg or two to consummate the union?

  The Johnny Lee reference at the end is totally superfluous and I’m all for it, although it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. (Wait, does Putin have a tongue in this column? If he does, how big is it? I can’t remember). Vladimir Putin, amputee cow-killer in a tree, always lookink for deeg-nity in all the wrong places. Get out of that tree, Vlad! Grow your own cow!

  Friedman still has it, man. Genius doesn’t age. In any case, please send your contest submissions today. Results TK.

  *It’s not a big deal — I’ve written things like, “He sees the face of Jesus in every tree stump” — but you can’t see “under” every rock, unless you have X-ray vision, or you’re picking up all those rocks. However, in that case, you’d see the C.I.A. wasn’t actually there, when Friedman’s point seems to be they aren’t. That’s why you’d probably want a word like “pictures” or “imagines” here. Even “sees” works if you’re using it in the sense of “envisions,” but I doubt that’s what Friedman was thinking. Again, this is small thing, but the man’s instinct for the wrong word is almost superhuman. Noted with awe.

  *  *  *

  Subscribe to TK News by Matt Taibbi

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/20/2022 – 22:30

• Sewage Surveillance Reveals Omicron Arrived In US Even Earlier Than Believed (And Is Disappearing Fast)
  Sewage Surveillance Reveals Omicron Arrived In US Even Earlier Than Believed (And Is Disappearing Fast)

  Shortly after the start of the COVID pandemic, scientists at Yale University started testing wastewater collected from the sewers of New Haven for any insights it might convey about the spread of COVID among the local population. It didn’t take long for researchers in other parts of the country (and the world) to follow suit by testing their own wastewater.

  

  More than a year later, wastewater testing has caught the attention the of the national media, as scientists and journalists search for more comprehensive ways to measure the prevalence of COVID infection within a population now that the emergence of home testing has made it more difficult for the authorities to track the number of positive tests.

  But even before that, we assumed that the number of infections would always outpace the official numbers, since plenty of people with asymptomatic infections never get tested.

  Earlier this month, data out of Boston suggested that the prevalence of COVID was actually much higher than the official numbers reflected.

  

  Now, data gleaned from wastewater is being used by the CDC to help determine when the omicron variant may have arrived in the US. As Bloomberg reports, evidence of omicron appeared in US sewage samples collected as early as Nov. 21, according to data collected by state and local health officials from California, Colorado, Houston and NYC. That data was later shared with the CDC.

  The first infection of omicron in a US-based patient wasn’t confirmed until Dec. 1 (the patient was located in California).

  “The findings give strong early evidence that the omicron variant was likely present or more widely distributed in these communities than originally indicated by clinical testing alone,” the authors said in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The four health authorities were the first to find signs of the variant in their wastewater, according to the study.

  In its report on the findings, BBG added that “analyzing wastewater containing human feces can be an important way to look for warning signs of new mutations, as well as track those already spreading to determine how long existing surges will last.”

  Wastewater can also provide advanced warning of a COVID surge. Dutch researchers reported in March 2020 that they were able to find genetic material from the virus in wastewater before COVID cases were reported in the population.

  Like one BBG source said: “everybody poops”.

  The technique “gives you a heads-up because people may not want to pick up the phone for surveys, but everybody poops,” said Gigi Gronvall, an immunologist at the John Hopkins Center for Health Security. “And it’s so unbiased because everybody uses the same sewer system.”

  The CDC now funds 43 health departments that participate in the National Wastewater Surveillance System, which provides data on COVID’s presence and trends in water systems.

  The great news is that the last week or so has seen the Boston wastewater RNA data plunge…

  

  Source

  The end of omicron is imminent… because everybody poops.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/20/2022 – 22:10

• Biden Admin Decrees All "Essential" Workers Traveling To US Must Be Fully Vaccinated
  Biden Admin Decrees All “Essential” Workers Traveling To US Must Be Fully Vaccinated

  It’s the latest example of “vaccines for thee, but not for me…”

  Despite the fact that the Supreme Court has blocked OSHA from enforcing the Biden Administration’s corporate vaccination mandate for most US workers, the administration has decided to require travelers visiting the US for “essential” reasons – ie to fill “essential” jobs like serving as a hospital nurse treating COVID patients – to be fully vaccinated.

  

  Travelers arriving in the US by plane have already been required to prove their vaccination status for months now. But the new restrictions, which take effect at the beginning of next week, will expand the requirement to cover foreigners entering the US via port, land or ferry terminals along the US-Mexico and US-Canada borders (though, fortunately for them, a negative COVID test isn’t required for entry at these locations).

  The requirement will also apply to “non-essential” travelers, meaning that people seeking to visit the US must be from one of the countries fortunate enough to have broad access to vaccines.

  In a statement, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said he was moving to protect public health while “safely facilitating the cross-border trade and travel that is critical to our economy.”

  “Starting on January 22, 2022, the Department of Homeland Security will require that non-U.S. individuals entering the United States via land ports of entry or ferry terminals along our Northern and Southern borders be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and be prepared to show related proof of vaccination,” said Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas. ”These updated travel requirements reflect the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to protecting public health while safely facilitating the cross-border trade and travel that is critical to our economy.”

  Regardless of whether they’re “essential” or “non-essential”, they must do the following:

  • Verbally attest to their COVID-19 vaccination status

  • Provide proof of a CDC-approved COVID-19 vaccination, as outlined on the CDC website

  • Present a valid Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI)-compliant document, such as a valid passport, Trusted Traveler Program card, or Enhanced Tribal Card

  • Be prepared to present any other relevant documents requested by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer during a border inspection

  Of course, this doesn’t bode well for the labor market, especially for hospitals desperate for front-line nurses and other “essential” workers, since health-care workers outside the US are typically even more reluctant to get the vaccine than health-care workers inside the US.

  Economic data, including, most notably, the Fed’s Beige Book (a collection of economic observations) has suggested as of late that the worker shortage in the US has started to ease.

  

  But the Biden Administration’s decision certainly won’t help hospitals and other health-care providers paying traveling nurses 3x what they pay their staff due to the demand.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/20/2022 – 21:50

• JPMorgan Spots A Crack In The Market One Day Ahead Of $3 Trillion OpEx
  JPMorgan Spots A Crack In The Market One Day Ahead Of $3 Trillion OpEx

  Earlier today we quoted a JPMorgan trader who was wondering if after yesterday’s mid-day swoon, the result of systematic, vol-targeting and CTA strategies unleashing a barrage of sell orders, if today’s action would be similar, to wit: “Let’s see if we can hold pre-market gains throughout the session as yesterday afternoon felt like systematic selling. If 1.90% was a buy-level in bonds, then we may have a relief rally being initiated led by Tech.”

  A few hours later we found out the answer, and it was a resounding no, because just around the time European market closed, the selling resumed, and boy was it glorious:

  

  So what happened? Well, clearly there were more sellers than buyers (yes, contrary to the ridiculous response that sellers and buyers are always the same, sellers can certainly be more than buyers, and it is the change in price that reflects relative selling or buying pressure and preference).

  But there was something more, because as as JPMorgan’s QDS strategist Peng Cheng observed, after weeks of relentless buying the dip by retail traders, on Thursday retail investors net sold $53mm, with $400mm coming in the last 2 hours. This, as JPM puts it, “is notable as it is the first time retail investors have net sold since December 6th. Since December 6th, the retail investor had been net buying, on average, more than $800mm per day.”

  But whereas JPM notes that the above is “great color” it does not get to the why of the sell-off.

  And while the answer includes some combination of technicals, deal gamma, and systematic activity, JPM’s Andrew Tyler writes that the “overarching story is how the Fed is changing investor behavior.” As he notes, the combination of ending QE, beginning QT, and rate hike liftoff has left Equity investors with significant uncertainty, one which is manifesting itself in a “sell all rallies” mentality with regards to the Tech sector.

  What is curious, is that according to JPMorgan’s Positioning Intelligence team, the selling is led by non-Hedge Funds (one wonders just how much of the recent markets tumble is due to deleveraging by risk-parity whales such as Bridgewater). Here is an excerpt from their weekly wrap:

  Tech – Still selling expensive stocks, but buying others: In the US, Expensive Software (JP1BXSFT) continues to underperform and HF flows have remained negative MTD. Additionally, expensive stocks in general (JP1QVLS) saw very strong selling over the past 5 days (>2z) with particularly strong selling on Thurs; it’s worth noting that periods of large selling in the past year have actually been followed by underperformance among these stocks. Despite the selling of expensive stocks and underperformance, Info Tech was actually the most net bought sector in N. Am. (just under +2z) and gross was added (>1z) for the week. Semis were the main driver, although most of TMT saw net buy skews for the week in aggregate.

  As the bank concludes, among the reasons for the market scare is that with the Fed meeting next week, what should be a non-event now has investors questioning (i) will the Fed end QE next week; (ii) is next week a live meeting or does liftoff begin in March; and, (iii)is the first rate hike 25bps, 50bps, or more. Incidentally, JPM’s answer to all is no (and 25bps).

  But before we get there, and get a powerful relief rally as Powell reaffirms that for all of Biden’s hollow rhetoric, the Fed will not cause a market crash just to tame inflation (the same inflation the Fed though was transitory as recently as October) and save Biden’s approval rating…

  

  … there is another issue to consider: tomorrow’s option expiration of $3.1 trillion in notional, including some $1.3 trillion in single-stocks.

  

  As Goldman’s Rocky Fishman writes in his latest Vol Vitals note, “the January expiration is always a focus for single stock option markets, because January options are listed years in advance and can build up high open interest“, a topic we discussed extensively earlier this week in “All You Need To Know About Friday’s “Deep” Option Expiration.“

  Going back to tomorrow’s critical market event, in its post-mortem from Thursday, SpotGamma writes that as expected, “a negative gamma position in all the indices made for volatile trade, today. The high gamma $4,600.00 SPX strike held as resistance; real-money sellers, alongside the hedging of negative delta options trades, bid volatility, and pressured indices.”

  In other words, stock liquidation played into the large negative gamma position which accelerated selling into the close, SpotGamma writes, adding that so long as the SPX trades below its Volatility Trigger – around 4,630 –  SpotGamma sees heightened volatility, and adds that trades with respect to Friday’s monthly OPEX will only compound the instability.

  In short, tomorrow could unleash sheer chaos in early trading, but once trillions in notional expire, taking away with them a substantial chunk of the negative gamma that dealers are currently trapped under, it is quite likely that following an initial burst lower, the market will finally bottom out for the near-term.

  Before we dig a little deeper into what to expect tomorrow, here is some context for today’s waterfall rout, courtesy of SpotGamma:

  Stocks continued to sell, Thursday, pressured by increased jobless claims, the prospects of more aggressive tightening of monetary policy, and poor responses to earnings.

  Growth and rate-sensitive names like Amazon and Peloton (which happened to halt production due to slowing demand), as well as Netflix (which fell after-hours on slower subscriber growth), are just some of the names leading to the downside. There were rumors of forced liquidations, which seemed to sync with with the afternoons indiscriminate selling.

  

  And despite a reduction in gamma levels ahead of today’s regular trade (9:30 AM – 4:00 PM ET),  SpotGamma observes that the move lower in markets, overall, comes with an increased concentration of put-heavy gamma tied to Friday’s monthly options expiration.

  To preface, delta denotes an options exposure to the underlying direction. Gamma, on the other hand, is the potential delta-hedging of options positions. 

  • When a position’s delta rises (falls) with stock or index price rises (falls), the underlying is in a positive-gamma environment.
  • When a position’s delta falls (rises) with stock or index price rises (falls), the underlying is in a negative-gamma environment.

  In the latter case, as the risk of out-of-the-money customer protection developing intrinsic value increases (given an increase in implied volatility or move lower in price), dealers are long more delta, and therefore the addition of hedges (short stock/futures) introduces negative flows (i.e., the addition of short delta hedges to long delta positions) that pressures markets.

  This negative gamma regime, which we experienced today, is affecting both single-stocks and the index products. Below, the selling of calls and buying of puts in Tesla, for instance, is a negative delta trade dealers hedge by selling stock, thus exacerbating weakness.

  To note, the reduction in the positive delta in names like Tesla, which, heading into this week, had nearly 107% of its deltas set to expire (as a percentage of average daily volume), is one dynamic further pressuring markets.

  

  This activity is feeding into products like the Nasdaq which is seeing a lot of put buying. A shift higher in the VIX term structure (below) denotes demand for index protection, especially in shorter-dated options that are more sensitive to changes in direction and implied volatility.

  

  If volatility continues to rise, positive exposure to delta rises. This solicits even more selling.

  

  Why does this matter and why is all of the above potentially bullish? Because many stocks are to have their largest “put-heavy” gamma positions expire soon. We are taking trillions in put notional. These positions are, at present, compounding weakness as dealers sell aggressively against very short-dated, increasingly sensitive negative gamma positions.

  The removal of this exposure post-OPEX and the approaching FOMC event will leave dealers with less positive delta exposure to sell against. That’s why, SpotGamma sees the market soon entering into a window of strength, to which we will only add that once $3+ trillion in options expire Friday and much of the dealer negative gamma overhang disappears, the selling which we predicted would dominate this week ahead of Friday’s Op-Ex, will have exhausted itself and the bandwagon of shorts that piggybacked on the rout in stocks is about to be painfully squeezed higher.

  Still, while the next move is higher, as long as bears successfully maintain S&P prices below the $4,630.00 SPX Volatility Trigger, there is increased potential for instability as dealer hedging flows continue to take from market liquidity (sell weakness and buy strength), further exacerbating underlying movement.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/20/2022 – 21:30

• Bitcoin, Ethereum Tumble Below Key Levels After Russian Crypto Ban, US Tech Wreck
  Bitcoin, Ethereum Tumble Below Key Levels After Russian Crypto Ban, US Tech Wreck

  As we detailed earlier, the Central Bank of Russia issued a report today calling for a blanket ban on domestic cryptocurrency trading and mining.

  The report titled “Cryptocurrencies: Trends, risks, measures” compares cryptocurrencies to a Ponzi scheme and calls for a complete ban on their use throughout Russia. The authors claim that cryptocurrencies are highly volatile in nature and are being used as a tool for illegal activities. The report also warned that crypto could pose a risk to financial sovereignty and could aid people in taking money out of the national economy. The report read:

  “Potential financial stability risks associated with cryptocurrencies are much higher for emerging markets, including Russia.” 

  The Russian central bank demanded a complete ban on over-the-counter (OTC) trading desks, crypto exchanges as well as peer-to-peer exchanges. 

  

  At first, cryptos seemed to shrug off the ban, rallying into and beyond the US equity market open but once US tech stocks started to take a beating, cryptos began to weaken and have accelerated as Asian markets open this evening…

  

  This downswing took Bitcoin back below the $40,000 Maginot Line…

  

  And Ethereum back below $3,000…

  

  Notably, Bitcoin’s correlation with tech stocks is soaring once again…

  

  Interestingly, as Russia moves to ban crypto, Bloomberg’s Vincent Cignarella points out that the Biden administration’s threat to block Russian banks’ access to dollars might have carried weight in the past, but in these days of alternative cryptocurrencies, it’s unlikely to work.

  Dollar sanctions may prove all but moot – and Bitcoin could rally significantly – if U.S. officials were to follow through with their dollar threat, as the token offers Russia payment options not available in the past.

  Cignarella notes that bitcoin appears to be in the process of forming a similar pattern seen last June. In completing a third dominant wave, one should expect a small bounce, wave 4 and then a reversion lower, wave 5, to complete — which would signal the end of the current selloff.

  

  It took about a month from last May to June for this to happen. Once complete, Bitcoin entered wave A, the first wave of a reversal. In this case it was a reversal higher, which many mistake as only a minor correction to the previous trend. If the pattern follows last summer, inspired by Russia looking for alternative methods of payments, the rally that could follow would potentially take Bitcoin above previous record highs north of $70,000. All a bit of a what-if scenario no doubt, but a what, and an if, that are a reasonable outcome.

  On the other side of the ledger, CoinTelegraph reports that even though Bitcoin is said to be correlated to traditional markets, BTC derivatives traders were not expecting sub-$44,000 prices, according to the Jan. 21 options expiry. Friday’s $590 million open interest will allow bears to score up to $82 million if BTC trades below $41,000 during the expiry.

  

  Here are the four most likely scenarios for Jan. 21’s $590 million options expiry. The imbalance favoring each side represents the theoretical profit. In other words, depending on the expiry price, the active quantity of call (buy) and put (sell) contracts varies:

  • Between $40,000 and $41,000: 30 calls vs. 3,320 puts. The net result is $132 million favoring the put (bear) options.

  • Between $41,000 and $42,000: 170 calls vs. 2,180 puts. The net result is $82 million favoring the put (bear) instruments.

  • Between $42,000 and $44,000: 1,480 calls vs. 1,130 puts. The net result is balanced between call and put options.

  • Between $44,000 and $45,000: 2,980 calls vs. 630 puts. The net result favors call (bull) instruments by $103 million.

  This crude estimate considers put options being used in bearish bets and call options exclusively in neutral-to-bullish trades. However, this oversimplification disregards more complex investment strategies.

  Bulls need $44,000 to bag a $103 million profit.

  Finally, data released by crypto platform Voyager Digital indicates that nearly two out of three Americans are bullish on crypto, believing it will gain value in 2022.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/20/2022 – 21:15

• "Bizarro World": Researcher Calls Out Censorship After Journal Pulls COVID-19 Vaccine Adverse Events Analysis
  “Bizarro World”: Researcher Calls Out Censorship After Journal Pulls COVID-19 Vaccine Adverse Events Analysis

  Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Jessica Rose didn’t ask for any of this. She started to analyze data on adverse reactions after COVID-19 vaccines simply as an exercise to master a new piece of software. But she couldn’t ignore what she saw and decided to publish the results of her analysis. The next thing she knew, she was in a “bizzarro world,” she told The Epoch Times.

  

  A paper she co-authored based on her analysis was withdrawn by the academic journal Elsevier under circumstances that raised eyebrows among her colleagues. The journal declined to comment on the matter.

  Rose received her PhD in computational biology from the Bar-Ilan University in Israel. After finishing her post-doctoral studies on molecular dynamics of certain proteins, she was looking for a new challenge. Switching to a new statistical computing software, she was looking for an interesting data set to sharpen her skills on. She picked the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a database of reports of health problems that have occurred after a vaccination and may or may not have been caused by it.

  

  She said she wasn’t looking for anything in particular in the data.

  “I don’t go in with questions,” she said.

  What she found, however, was disturbing to her.

  VAERS has been in place since 1990 to provide an early warning signal that there might be a problem with a vaccine. Anybody can submit the reports, which are then checked for duplicates. They are largely filed by health care personnel, based on previous research. Usually, there would be around 40,000 reports a year, including several hundred deaths.

  But with the introduction of the COVID-19 vaccines, VAERS reports went through the roof. By Jan. 7, there were over a million reports, including more than 21,000 deaths. Other notable issues include over 11,000 heart attacks, nearly 13,000 cases of Bell’s palsy, and over 25,000 cases of myocarditis or pericarditis.

  Rose found the data alarming, only to realize authorities and even some experts were generally dismissing it.

  “Clearly, there’s no concern [among these authorities and experts] for people who are suffering adverse events,” she said.

  The usual arguments against the VAERS data have been that it’s unverified and unreliable.

  Rose, however, sees such arguments as irrelevant—VAERS was never meant to provide definitive answers, it’s meant to give early warning and, as she sees it, it’s doing just that.

  “It’s emitting so many safety signals and they’re being ignored,” she said.

  

  She teamed up with Peter McCullough, an internist, cardiologist, and epidemiologist, to write a paper on VAERS reports of myocarditis in youth—an issue already acknowledged as a side effect of the vaccination, though usually described as rare.

  As of July 9, they found 559 VAERS reports of myocarditis, 97 among children ages 12–15. Some of them may have been related to COVID itself, which can also cause heart problems, but there were too many cases to dismiss the likelihood the vaccines were involved, according to the authors.

  “Within 8 weeks of the public offering of COVID-19 products to the 12–15-year-old age group, we found 19 times the expected number of myocarditis cases in the vaccination volunteers over background myocarditis rates for this age group,” the paper said.

  After two weeks, on Oct. 15, the paper disappeared from the Elsevier website, replaced by a notice of “Temporary Removal.” Not only weren’t the authors told why, they weren’t informed at all, according to Rose.

  “It’s unprecedented in the eyes of all of my colleagues,” she said.

  When they brought up the issue with the journal, they were first told the paper was pulled because it wasn’t “invited,” Rose said. That was shot down as irrelevant by McCullough, who threatened to sue for breach of contract. The journal then turned to its terms of use, saying it has the right to refuse any paper for any reason.

  It’s still not clear why the paper was pulled.

  “I do apologise, but Elsevier cannot comment on this enquiry,” said Jonathan Davis, the journal’s communications officer, in an email to The Epoch Times.

  In late November, the paper was replaced by a notice that the “article has been withdrawn at the request of the author(s) and/or editor.”

  “It just feels like weird censorship that isn’t really justified,” Rose said.

  The paper’s conclusions are not necessarily controversial. A recent Danish study concluded, for example, an elevated risk of myocarditis for young people following the Moderna COVID vaccine.

  It’s common, however, even for papers that examine potential issues with the vaccines to frame their results in a way that still endorses vaccination.

  “That’s what you have to say to get your work published these days,” Rose said.

  Her paper did no such thing.

  “As part of any risk/benefit analysis which must be completed in the context of experimental products, the points herein must be considered before a decision can be made pertaining to agreeing to 2-dose injections of these experimental COVID-19 products, especially into children and by no means, should parental consent be waived under any circumstances to avoid children volunteering for injections with products that do not have proven safety or efficacy,” the paper said.

  The paper also called the vaccines “injectable biological products”—a reference to the fact that they are distinct from all other traditional vaccines.

  A traditional vaccine uses “whole live or attenuated pathogens” while the COVID vaccines use “mRNA in lipid nanoparticles,” Rose explained via email. She said the lipid nanoparticles include “cationic lipids which are highly toxic.” Pfizer, the manufacturer of the most popular COVID-19 vaccine in many countries, addressed the issue by saying the dose is sufficiently low to ensure “an acceptable safety margin,” according to the European drug authority, the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (pdf).

  Rose also noted that the COVID-19 vaccines haven’t gone “through the 10-15 years of safety testing that vaccines have always had to go through … for obvious reasons.”

  By this point, Rose is no longer a dispassionate observer. Reading through countless VAERS reports gave her a window into the hardships of those who believe they’ve been harmed by the vaccines.

  “I speak for all of those people,” she said.

  

  In the past, 50 reports of deaths in VAERS would prompt authorities to hit the brakes and investigate, Rose said. In her view, that should have happened with the COVID-19 vaccines a year ago.

  Not only has that not happened, but it isn’t even clear what would be enough to convince the authorities to do so.

  “What’s the cut-off number for the number of deaths?” Rose asked.

  The counterargument is that the vaccines save more lives than they cost. But in Rose’s view, this logic is flawed since the vaccines haven’t been around long enough and studied thoroughly enough to tell how many lives they may cost.

  It is known, however, that VAERS understates adverse events following vaccination—by a factor of anywhere between 5 and as much as 100, based on some estimates.

  Submitting a VAERS report takes about 30 minutes and many medical practitioners simply don’t have the time, Rose said. Some may feel that filing the report may get them labeled as “anti-vaxxers.” Some may simply not associate whatever health issue they’re facing with the vaccination. Some may not even be aware VAERS exists.

  It’s unlikely that any significant number of the reports would be fraudulent, she suggested, noting it’s a federal offense to submit a false report.

  Rose has now joined the ranks of dissident doctors and researchers skeptical of the official line on the vaccines and the pandemic in general. She described it as something she’s compelled to do despite the disincentives involved.

  “We don’t want to be doing this. But it is our duty. Doctors swore an oath to do no harm. And researchers with integrity cannot look away from this,” she said via email.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/20/2022 – 21:10

• Peloton Stock Bounces After CEO Disputes Report Of Layoffs, Production Halts
  Peloton Stock Bounces After CEO Disputes Report Of Layoffs, Production Halts

  Update (2057ET): Shares in Peloton bounced after hours following a statement from CEO John Foley, who refuted reports of a complete production halt and layoffs, CNBC reports.

  “This week, we’ve experienced leaks containing confidential information that have led to a flurry of speculative articles in the press,” wrote Foley in a letter sent to “the Peloton Team” and posted publicly. “The information the media has obtained is incomplete, out of context, and not reflective of Peloton’s strategy.”

  Foley added that they company had “identified a leaker, and we are moving forward with the appropriate legal action.”

  He called reports that the company had halted the production of stationary bicycle and treadmills “false,” adding that layoffs were not a sure thing at this point.

  

  “We are still in the process of considering all options as part of our efforts to make our business more flexible,” wrote Foley, who said that the company is “resetting our production levels for sustainable growth.”

  

  Read the full letter below:

  Team,

  We have always done our best to share news with you all first, before sharing with the public. This week, we’ve experienced leaks containing confidential information that have led to a flurry of speculative articles in the press. The information the media has obtained is incomplete, out of context, and not reflective of Peloton’s strategy. It has saddened me to know you read these things without the clarity and context that you deserve.

  Before I go on, I want all of you to know that we have identified a leaker, and we are moving forward with the appropriate legal action.

  But moving forward, I want to take a moment to talk about some of the changes with you directly.

  As a public company that is in a pre-earnings “Quiet Period” we are limited in what information we can share. However, we issued a pre-earnings press release earlier this evening about our preliminary Q2 results, in order to offer an initial and more accurate picture of our business performance.

  As you have heard me and other leaders say over the past few months, we are continuing to invest in our growth, but we also need to review our cost structure to ensure we set ourselves up for continued success, while never losing sight of the important role we play in helping our 6.2+ million Members lead healthier, happier lives.

  What this means for our team right now

  In the past, we’ve said layoffs would be the absolute last lever we would ever hope to pull. However, we now need to evaluate our organization structure and size of our team, with the utmost care and compassion. And we are still in the process of considering all options as part of our efforts to make our business more flexible.

  This team is made up of some of the smartest, most passionate, hard-working and KIND people I have ever met. You have each painted your masterpiece at Peloton in your own way, and your contributions matter. They always have, and they always will.

  I am SO proud of everything we have accomplished together, and it pains me we are faced with these tough decisions. | know this is difficult, and I want to thank you for your patience as we work through these times together.

  Rumors that we are halting all production of bikes and Treads are false

  Notably, we’ve found ourselves in the middle of a once-in-a-hundred-year event with the COVID-19 pandemic, and what we anticipated would happen over the course of three years happened in months during 2020, and into 2021.

  We worked quickly and diligently to meet the demand head-on at a time when the world really needed us, in large part thanks to how hard you worked every day. We feel good about right-sizing our production, and, as we evolve to more seasonal demand curves, we are resetting our production levels for sustainable growth.

  Connected Fitness is here to stay

  This past quarter, our churn rate was 0.79%. This means that our Members are sticking with us, again thanks to your brilliance and continued innovation. Connected fitness provides the convenience people need to stay active and centered and will continue to be a key part of the future of fitness. In fact, just a few days ago, we recorded our highest ever number of daily workouts — over 2.9M workouts.

  I want to acknowledge that this does not answer all of the questions I am sure many of you have right now. But, I did want to share what we could at this time. I know there is a lot of noise and anxiety in our environment right now, which is why I wanted to take this moment to provide some additional context for you all as we navigate the next few weeks together.

  *  *  *

  Update (1830ET): After a catastrophic collapse in the company’s share price today – back below its IPO price – it appears Peloton is attempting to kitchen-sink things as it has just pre-announced revenue (miss), subs (miss), and EBITDA (beat but still a huge loss):

  • Prelim revenue about $1.14 billion, estimate $1.16 billion 

  • Prelim connected fitness subscribers about 2.77 million, estimate 2.81 million

  • Prelim adjusted Ebitda loss $260 million to $270 million, estimate loss $332.6 million 

  John Foley, co-founder and CEO, whose net worth slipped to just $350 million today – well off the billionaires ranks, confirmed the actions that CNBC had reported earlier in the day…

  “As we discussed last quarter, we are taking significant corrective actions to improve our profitability outlook and optimize our costs across the company.

  This includes gross margin improvements, moving to a more variable cost structure, and identifying reductions in our operating expenses as we build a more focused Peloton moving forward.  

  This work is still underway and we expect to have more details to share when we report earnings on February 8, 2022.”

  For a brief moment, PTON shares jumped on this release, but it did not last…

  

  *  *  *

  As we detailed earlier, Peloton Interactive, Inc. shares crashed more than 24% after CNBC reported internal documents from the company that said production of its bikes and treadmills would be temporarily halted due to souring demand. Shares have been halted and reopened several times…

  

  …and now trade at a significant discount versus the IPO price of $29…

  

  We suspect the chaps at Viking Global are a little saddle-sore this morning…

  

  In a confidential presentation dated Jan. 10, the company (known for slapping an iPad on a stationary bike and charging thousands of dollars) said demand for its bikes and treadmill had faced a “significant reduction” worldwide.

  CNBC explains more about Peloton’s upcoming production halts: 

  Peloton plans to pause Bike production for two months, from February to March, the documents show. It already halted production of its more expensive Bike+ in December and will do so until June. It won’t manufacture its Tread treadmill machine for six weeks, beginning next month. And it doesn’t anticipate producing any Tread+ machines in fiscal 2022, according to the documents. Peloton had previously halted Tread+ production after a safety recall last year.

  Peloton has completely misjudged demand as it’s stuck with thousands of cycles and treadmills sitting in warehouses across the country. 

  We’ve been reporting on the Peloton story for the last week, citing multiple reports of storm clouds gathering over the company. The first was a notice from the company, informing new customers it would charge hundreds of dollars in fees for delivery and setup of bikes and treadmills. The second piece of news is the company working with management consulting group McKinsey & Co. to analyze cost structure and potentially slash jobs. 

  Meanwhile, Peloton executives and insiders unloaded hundreds of millions of dollars in shares in prearranged 10b5-1 plans with an average cost basis well over $100. Insider selling stopped after a terrible earnings release in November. 

  

  Insiders knew all long this was an unsustainable business (hence why they dumped into gullible retail). 

  The recent release of the new Peloton Bike+ has yet to save the company. Maybe because the bike costs a whopping $2,500. 

  As we’ve noted before, the company needs to quickly expand into the metaverse and engineer a short squeeze by saying it’s coming out with a VR cycling product.

  … or maybe this. 

  Peloton needs to quickly pivot to powering bitcoin miners

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 20, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/20/2022 – 20:58

• Pelosi's Top Pick For Transportation Committee Caught On Video "Repeatedly" Crashing Her Car While Attempting To Park
  Pelosi’s Top Pick For Transportation Committee Caught On Video “Repeatedly” Crashing Her Car While Attempting To Park

  In another stunning display of total liberal competence, Nancy Pelosi’s top pick to chair the Transportation Committee was caught on video this week grinding her vehicle into parked cars while attempting the difficult task of parking. 

  Video shows 84-year-old Eleanor Holmes Norton grinding up against a nearby vehicle while pulling awkwardly into a parking spot.

  She was caught red handed not even leaving a note before leaving the scene. The octogenarian represents the District of Columbia as a Democrat.

  .@SpeakerPelosi is seriously considering this person to serve as the chairwoman of the Transportation Committee. pic.twitter.com/Gh5698ZeYU

  — Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) January 17, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  As the video shows, Norton pulls into a diagonally aligned parking spot at a perpendicular angle, likely pulling in from the wrong direction, putting her car at a terrible angle among the other parked cars. 

  She then locks the car using her keyfob and casually walks away.

  Congressman Thomas Massie put the video up on his Twitter account this week, and it immediately went viral. 

  “Speaker Pelosi is seriously considering this person to serve as the chairwoman of the Transportation Committee,” Massie wrote. “Folks, I’m not making this up.”

  

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/20/2022 – 20:50

• This Is Your Last Chance, Part 1
  This Is Your Last Chance, Part 1

  Authored by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic blog,

  The indictment is long and strong.

  A cabal of politicians, governments, courts, medical authorities, pharmaceutical companies, multinational agencies, the mainstream media, academics, and foundations, particularly the World Economic Forum, have concocted responses to a virus and its variants that have robbed the people of rightful liberties, are a mechanism for the imposition of global totalitarianism, and have amplified rather than reduced the virus’s dangers, inflicting severe injury and death that will last years, perhaps decades, and afflict millions, if not billions, of victims (See “The Means Are The End,” Robert Gore, SLL, November 13, 2021).

  This is their last chance.

  

  They can reverse course and pray to whatever demonic deity they pray to that it’s enough to prevent the retribution they deserve, or they can perish in the destruction they’ve created. They will reap what they have sown, their time is up.

  This is it, the last gasp of the psychopaths who express their contempt and hatred for humanity by trying to rule it. Compulsion, not voluntary and natural cooperation. Power, pull, and politics, not incentives, competition, honest production, and value-for-value trade. From each according to his virtue to each according to his depravity.

  “The Last Gasp,” Robert Gore, SLL, March 24, 2020

  Their time is up.

  This assertion may appear as recklessly foolish as Luke Skywalker’s ultimatum – “Jabba, this is your last chance, free us or die!” – did to Jabba the Hut at the Sarlacc Pit.

  It’s not, but to understand why requires an understanding of slow moving (on human time scale) but enormously powerful forces. Most history studies the wrong things and most predictions are straight line projections of the present and recent past.

  The linchpin of history is innovation, not governments and rulers. We don’t know who ruled whom when humanity lived in caves, but we do know that someone tamed fire, someone planted seeds and cultivated them for food, and someone invented the wheel. With such steps humanity emerged from the caves and began building civilization. Even at this early stage one thing was clear: innovation creates new capabilities and opportunities and serves as the basis for further innovation.

  Government is the acquisition of resources that enables those who govern to exercise control over those whom they govern. This presupposes resources, which presupposes production. Government is always subsidiary to production, yet most history focuses on the former and treats the latter as a secondary matter. This is looking down the telescope from the wrong end. Before a government can take someone must make.

  History as studied is a dreary succession of violent takers: their kingdoms and empires, their exactions from the populace, their wars, their depredations, their monuments, and so on. Most of this is trivial compared to the innovation that gets short shrift.

  Who ruled which nations in 1440 and what effect does whatever they did have on us today? There’s not one person in ten million who can knowledgeably answer those questions. Ask instead if the moveable-type printing press that Johannes Gutenberg invented that year has had an effect on their lives and most will acknowledge its inescapable importance.

  The few rulers who have ruled wisely are largely forgotten. Wise rule is maintaining the conditions that allow the people themselves to create, innovate, and produce, what’s been called the night watchman state. Protecting them and their property from invasion, violence, theft, and fraud are the important but minimalist assignments for such governments. Crucially, such protection of the people extends to protection from the government itself. This type of government offers would-be rulers no opportunity for the larceny, self-aggrandizement, and power they crave, which is why they’ve been so rare.

  The perfect night watchman state has never been achieved. There have only been a few that have come close. Conditions of relatively greater freedom, however, have coincided with the explosions of innovation and productivity that have bequeathed to humanity most of its progress.

  The United States’ explosion was the Industrial Revolution, which launched virtually every important industry we have today and took the nation from its agrarian roots to industrial preeminence. With the exception of Theodore Roosevelt, an outlier in many unfortunate ways, the presidents who presided during the Industrial Revolution (1865-1913) have passed into obscurity, always a desirable fate for presidents. (See “The Magnificent Eleven,” Robert Gore, SLL, May 3, 2017. For a fictional treatment of the period, see The Golden Pinnacle, Robert Gore, 2013.)

  Nineteenth-century fecundity set the table for twentieth-century insanity, giving psychopathic rulers the resources for two world wars and innumerable smaller ones, history’s most totalitarian governments, genocides, and the perpetration of myriad other miseries and horrors. The twentieth century is easily history’s most tyrannical and bloody . . . so far. Emblematic of the century is its “greatest” invention, nuclear weaponry, which can destroy all life on earth.

  In the United States, establishment of the central bank and imposition of income taxes in 1913 allowed the government to expropriate a far higher share of the nation’s incomes and wealth than it had. Shortly thereafter, ignoring George Washington’s sage advice to avoid foreign entanglements, the U.S. entered World War I. The Industrial Revolution and its comparative freedom were over, the accretion of state power that continues to this day was underway.

  Government resurfaced as the dominant institution, as it has been for most of history, not just in the U.S. but around the globe. Intellectual fashion followed the political trend. Money and power—heady prospects for many intellectuals—were to be had promoting the growth of the state and toadying to its functionaries. A few brave souls spoke out against the trend and championed freedom, but they were ignored and shunned. Today, champions of freedom are consigned to obscure corners of the Internet.

  You would think that living off the Industrial Revolution’s productive legacy, with first call on incomes and accumulated wealth, rulers would command more than ample resources to do whatever they desired. Such is not the case. Their schemes and rapacity are unlimited while even in the most productive and wealthy societies, resources are not. Governments and their central banks have created a debt explosion that leaves the world in the deepest financial hole it’s ever been.

  The explosion has accelerated the past few years, leaving rulers at the outer limits of what they can expropriate or borrow. Whatever growth in GDPs they now hail, the unmentioned growth in debt is greater—the hole gets deeper. This state of affairs illustrates history’s central truism: governments can’t produce. Their stock in trade, coercion and violence, only destroys. Making producers tax and debt slaves to those who produce nothing destroys both production and integrity.

  The death knell sounded in 1971 when the United States government repudiated the last vestige of its promise to redeem its dollars for gold. Debt would be the coin of the realm. The bland term “financialization” hides the moral obscenity. Each year the nation’s debt has grown. Production, when netted against that debt, has shrunk, and an increasingly large portion of what remains is diverted to those who don’t produce. Washington decides who gets what, but it can’t command the what. That shrinks as productive virtue is penalized and theft, fraud, and violence are rewarded.

  This increasingly precarious state of affairs has lasted for fifty years. It won’t last much longer. Only moral and intellectual bankruptcy greater than current financial bankruptcy could call this abject failure a failure of capitalism.

  Capitalism is the economics of political freedom. The strangulation of both in the U.S. officially commenced in 1913. They are the antithesis of what we now have, state-directed collectivism. Capitalism and freedom didn’t fail the people, the people failed capitalism and freedom. If people can’t handle individual freedom—as collectivists like to argue—they certainly can’t handle collectivist power, as the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have amply demonstrated. It’s like the one brat in a room full of self-directed, happily interacting children seizing control of the room.

  Part 2 coming soon…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/20/2022 – 20:30

• Texas Joins West Virginia In Boycotting BlackRock Over 'Decarbonization' Push
  Texas Joins West Virginia In Boycotting BlackRock Over ‘Decarbonization’ Push

  Typically, letters to investors don’t elicit this kind of backlash. But given BlackRock’s outsize influence on the US (and the global) economy, perhaps it’s not surprising that a handful of US states with thriving energy industries are expressing their frustration with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and his latest essay about the importance of “stakeholder capitalism”.

  As we reported yesterday, West Virginia’s state treasurer has announced that the state would end use of BlackRock funds for all state investments in retaliation for the firm’s antagonistic stance toward the oil and gas industry.

  Now, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has joined the fray, issuing a letter of his own late Wednesday urging his own state’s comptroller, Glenn Hegar, to place BlackRock on a list of companies that have cut ties with the Texas oil and gas industry.

  “If Wall Street turns their back on Texas and our thriving oil and gas industry, then Texas will not do business with Wall Street,” Patrick wrote.

  Unlike his previous letter to investors from 2021, when Fink announced BlackRock’s commitment to achieving “net zero” emissions while pressuring energy companies to make climate protection more of a priority, Fink said in his latest letter that companies must balance the interests of many different stakeholders. In a sense, Fink was walking back BlackRock’s hostile stance toward fossil fuel companies.

  

  BlackRock clarified in a statement that it “does not boycott energy companies,” according to Bloomberg.

  The firm “does not boycott energy companies,” New York-based BlackRock said in an emailed statement. “We do not pursue divestment from oil and gas companies as a policy. We will continue to invest in these companies and work with them to maximize long-term value for our clients. Our primary concern with the law is the potential negative consequences it could have on current and future Texas pensioners.”

  In his letter to Hegar, Lt. Gov. Patrick referenced the “Oil & Gas Investment Protection Act”, a Texas law that was passed and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott last year. The law stipulates that the Texas government shouldn’t contract with or invest in companies that boycott the energy industry. As part of the law, the state comptroller is tasked with preparing an “official list” of firms that are attacking the state’s most important industry. Lt. Gov. Patrick is asking that BlackRock be placed “at the top” of that list.

  Patrick explained that BlackRock’s commitment to “net zero” emissions and decarbonization directly contradicts the firm’s assurances that it is “committed to Texas and Texas’s vast energy footprint.”

  “Just yesterday, BlackRock Chairman and CEO, Larry Fink, issued his annual 2022 letter to CEOs indicating that BlackRock’s goal is to transition to a “net zero” world, including decarbonizing the energy sector. Needless to say, it is highly inconsistent to claim support for Texas’ oil and gas energy industry while leading a “net zero” policy effort that will destroy the oil and gas industry and destabilize the economy worldwide.”

  Now that Texas has joined W.Va. in slamming BlackRock and Larry Fink over their (largely fanciful) commitments to “net zero” and promises to divest from oil and gas firms, we’re certainly curious to see if any more states with vibrant energy industries (Oklahoma, perhaps?) add their voices to the chorus of criticism directed at the world’s largest asset manager.

  Readers can find Lt. Gov Patrick’s complete letter below:

  Dear Comptroller Hegar,

  Thank you for your ongoing efforts to implement Senate Bill (SB) 13 (87th Regular Session), the Oil & Gas Investment Protection Act, by Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury. As you know, this law says Texas should not contract with or invest in companies that boycott energy companies. Because I strongly believe we need to prioritize and protect our state’s and nation’s energy independence, I made the passage of SB 13 a high priority.

  As you prepare the official list of companies that boycott energy companies, I ask that you include BlackRock, and any company like them, that choose to hurt Texas oil and gas energy companies by boycotting them in violation of Senate Bill 13. As I have stated before, if Wall Street turns their back on Texas and our thriving oil and gas industry, then Texas will not do business with Wall Street.

  Please know, BlackRock only recently met with my office after you sent BlackRock and others a letter threatening to take action against entities that boycott energy companies. At the meeting with my staff, Blackrock said it was committed to Texas and Texas’s vast energy footprint, but I have grave concerns that BlackRock’s public statements and actions do not reflect its sentiments presented to my office.

  Just yesterday, BlackRock Chairman and CEO, Larry Fink, issued his annual 2022 letter to CEOs indicating that BlackRock’s goal is to transition to a “net zero” world, including decarbonizing the energy sector. Needless to say, it is highly inconsistent to claim support for Texas’ oil and gas energy industry while leading a “net zero” policy effort that will destroy the oil and gas industry and destabilize the economy worldwide.

  This is nothing new for Mr. Fink. In his 2020 letter to CEOs, he stated that Blackrock would be “exiting investments that present a high sustainability-related risk.”

  He expanded on this initiative further in his letter to BlackRock’s clients:

  “Where we do not see progress in [transitioning to “net zero”], and in particular where we see a lack of alignment combined with a lack of engagement, we will not only use our vote against management for our index portfolio-held shares, we will also flag these holdings for potential exit in our discretionary active portfolios[.]”

  According to Bloomberg on January 12, 2022, when addressing their new Climate Action Multi-Asset Fund and Climate Action Equity Fund, BlackRock said that it intends to incorporate a year-on-year decarbonization rate and identify companies that appear to be “long-term, disruptive structural winners” in driving down greenhouse gas emissions.

  These statements indicate that BlackRock is capriciously discriminating against the oil and gas industry by exiting investments solely because companies do not subscribe to a “net zero” policy beyond what is required by law.

  According to SB 13, a company is considered to be boycotting an energy company if it limits relations with an entity involved in the fossil fuel-based energy sector if the entity “does not commit or pledge to meet environmental standards beyond applicable federal and state law[.]” Committing to a “net zero” carbon strategy is beyond applicable environmental standards in federal and state law. Therefore, BlackRock is boycotting energy companies by basing investment decisions on whether a company pledges to meet BlackRock’s “net zero” goals.

  Furthermore, BlackRock’s discrimination goes well beyond just its investment decisions. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, it was noted that “BlackRock made waves last spring when it voted to replace three Exxon Mobil Corp. directors over the oil giant’s reluctance to quickly transition to cleaner energy sources.” It is not appropriate for Mr. Fink and BlackRock, or any other company, to arbitrarily strong-arm the energy sector to commit to exceed federal and state environmental laws.

  As you prepare the list of those that boycott Texas energy companies, I ask that BlackRock be at the top of the list, and any company like them that discriminates against Texas energy. I am committed to keeping Texas the number one oil and gas state in the country. Texas will not do business with those that boycott fossil fuels.

  Thank you for all you do for Texas.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/20/2022 – 20:10

• New Emails Expose Fauci's Role In Shaping Highly Influential Paper That Established COVID "Natural Origin" Narrative
  New Emails Expose Fauci’s Role In Shaping Highly Influential Paper That Established COVID “Natural Origin” Narrative

  Authored by Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke via The Epoch Times,

  New evidence has emerged that suggests that Dr. Anthony Fauci not only initiated efforts to cover up evidence pointing to a lab origin of SARS-CoV-2 but actively shaped a highly influential academic paper that excluded the possibility of a lab leak.

  

  Fauci’s involvement with the paper wasn’t acknowledged by the authors, as it should have been under prevailing academic standards. Neither was it acknowledged by Fauci himself, who denied having communicated with the authors when asked directly while testifying before Congress last week.

  The article, Proximal Origin, was co-authored by five virologists, four of whom participated in a Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference that was hastily convened by Fauci, who serves as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and Jeremy Farrar, who heads the UK-based Wellcome Trust, after public reporting of a potential link between the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China and the COVID-19 outbreak.

  The initial draft of Proximal Origin was completed on the same day the teleconference, which wasn’t made public, took place. Notably, at least three authors of the paper were privately telling Fauci’s teleconference group both during the call and in subsequent emails that they were 60 to 80 percent sure that COVID-19 had come out of a lab.

  Until now, it wasn’t known what role, if any, Fauci played in shaping the contents of the article, which formed the primary basis for government officials and media organizations to claim the “natural origin” theory for the virus. While the contents of emails previously released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show the Proximal Origin paper clearly conflicts with the authors’ private views on the virus’ origin, it was unclear if the authors had preemptively reshaped their views to please Fauci or if Fauci himself had an active role in shaping the article.

  As the head of NIAID, Fauci controls a large portion of the world’s research funds for virologists. At least three virologists involved in the drafting of Proximal Origin have seen substantial increases in funding from the agency since the paper was first published. Any interference by Fauci in the paper’s narrative would present a serious conflict of interest.

  Emails Show That Fauci, Collins Exerted Influence

  Newly released notes taken by House Republican staffers from emails that still remain largely redacted clearly point to Fauci having been actively engaged in shaping the article and its conclusion. The GOP lawmakers gained limited access to the emails after a months-long battle with Fauci’s parent body, the Department of Health and Human Services.

  The new emails reveal that on Feb. 4, 2020, one of the article’s co-authors, virologist Edward Holmes, shared a draft of Proximal Origin with Farrar. Like Fauci, Farrar controls the disbursement of vast amounts of funding for virology research.

  Holmes prefaced his email to Farrar with the note that the authors “did not mention other anomalies as this will make us look like loons.” It isn’t known what other anomalies Holmes was referring to, but his statement indicates that Proximal Origin may have omitted certain anomalies of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, suggesting that the paper may have been narrative-driven from the start.

  

  Dr. Anthony Fauci (R), director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks while U.S. President Donald Trump (C) and Vice President Mike Pence listen during a briefing on the coronavirus pandemic, in the press briefing room of the White House on March 24, 2020. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

  During Fauci’s teleconference, participants had discussed at least two anomalies specific to the virus—the virus’s furin cleavage site, which has never been observed in naturally occurring SARS coronaviruses, and the pathogen’s unusual backbone, which fails to match any known virus backbone.

  Farrar almost immediately shared Holmes’s draft with Fauci and Collins via email, while excluding other participants of the teleconference. The ensuing email thread containing discussion among the three suggests that the reason for the secretiveness may have been that they were shaping the content of the paper itself, something that has never been publicly acknowledged.

  It’s notable that the email thread included only the three senior members of the teleconference. Using Farrar as a conduit to communicate with the authors may have been seen by Fauci and Collins as adding a layer of deniability.

  Fauci, Collins Express Concern Over ‘Serial Passage’

  During a Feb. 4, 2020, email exchange among the men, Collins pointed out that Proximal Origin argued against an engineered virus but that serial passage was “still an option” in the draft. Fauci appeared to share Collins’s concerns, noting in a one-line response: “?? Serial passage in ACE2-transgenic mice.”

  Serial passage is a process whereby a virus is manipulated in a lab by repeatedly passing it through human-like tissue such as genetically modified mice, which mimic human lung tissue. This is notable given that during the Feb. 1 teleconference, at least three of Proximal Origin’s authors had advised Collins and Fauci that the virus may have been manipulated in a lab through serial passage or by genetic insertion of certain features.

  

  Then-National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins stands in Bethesda, Md., on Jan. 26, 2021. Collins stepped down in December 2021. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

  One day after Fauci and Collins shared their comments, on Feb. 5, 2020, Farrar emailed Fauci and Collins stating that “[t]he team will update the draft today and I will forward immediately—they will add further comments on the glycans.”

  The reference to glycans is notable as they are carbohydrate-based polymers produced by humans. The push by Fauci, Collins, and Farrar to have the paper’s authors expand on the issue of glycans appears to confirm that they were exerting direct influence on the content of Proximal Origin.

  According to Rossana Segreto, a microbiologist and member of the virus origins search group DRASTIC, emphasizing the presence of glycans in SARS-CoV-2 might suggest that Fauci and his group were looking to add arguments against serial passage in the lab. A study later found that Proximal Origin’s prediction on the presence of the O-linked glycans wasn’t valid.

  The newly released emails don’t reveal what additional discussions may have taken place among Fauci, Collins, and Farrar in the ensuing days. Perhaps that’s partly because Farrar had noted on another email thread addressed to Fauci’s teleconference group that scientific discussions should be taken offline.

  Online Version Appears to Incorporate Fauci, Collins Suggestions

  Eleven days later, on Feb. 16, 2020, Proximal Origin was published online. The paper argued aggressively for a natural origin of SARS-CoV-2.

  An immediate observation from an examination of the Feb. 16 version of Proximal Origin is that “glycans,” the term that Farrar, Fauci and Collins wanted to emphasize, is cited 12 times. We don’t know to what extent glycans were discussed in the Feb. 4 draft as it remains concealed by National Institute of Health (NIH) officials.

  An item of particular significance is that the Feb. 16 version omits any mention of the ACE2-transgenic mice that Fauci had initially flagged in his Feb. 4 email to Collins and Farrar. While the Feb. 16 version of Proximal Origin acknowledges that a furin cleavage site could have been generated through serial passage using animals with ACE2 receptors, the cited animals in the Feb. 16 version were ferrets—not transgenic mice.

  

  The P4 laboratory on the campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on May 13, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

  The authors’ use of ferrets is peculiar not only because the term “transgenic mice” was almost certainly used in the Feb. 4 version but also because it was known at the time that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was conducting serial passage experiments on coronaviruses using ACE2 transgenic mice.

  Even more conspicuously, the reference to ferrets was removed entirely from a March 17 updated version of the paper. In its place, a passage was added that stated “such work [serial passage experiments with ACE2 animals] has also not previously been described,” in academic literature—despite the fact that the Wuhan Institute’s work with ACE2 transgenic mice has been extensively described in academic papers.

  Published Version of Proximal Origin Was Altered

  Following the online publication of Proximal Origin on Feb. 16, 2020, the article was published in the prominent science journal Nature on March 17. In addition to the changes surrounding the transgenic mice, a number of other notable edits were made to strengthen the natural origin narrative.

  On March 6, 2020, the paper’s lead author, Kristian Andersen, appeared to acknowledge the inputs from Collins, Farrar, and Fauci, when he emailed the three to say, “Thank you again for your advice and leadership as we have been working through the SARS-CoV-2 ‘origins’ paper.”

  Perhaps most strikingly, the most often publicly cited passage from the March 17 version of the paper, “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible,” doesn’t appear in the Feb. 16 version. Additionally, while the Feb. 16 version states that “genomic evidence does not support the idea that SARS-CoV-2 is a laboratory construct” the March 17 version was altered to state that “the evidence shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus.”

  Similar changes in language are evident in various parts of the March 17 version. For example, a section that stated “analysis provides evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct” was amended to read “analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct.”

  

  A medical staff member gestures inside an isolation ward at Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan in China’s Hubei Province on March 10, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

  The March 17 version also omits an entire section from the Feb. 16 version that centered around an amino acid called phenylalanine. According to Segreto, a similarly situated amino acid in the original SARS virus had “mutated into phenylalanine as result of cell passage in human airway epithelium.” Segreto surmises that the Proximal Origin authors might have deleted this section so as not to highlight that the phenylalanine in SARS-CoV-2 might have resulted from serial passage in a lab.

  Segreto’s analysis is backed up by the fact that another section in the Feb. 16 version which states that “experiments with [the original] SARS-CoV have shown that engineering such a site at the S1/S2 junction enhances cell–cell fusion,” was reworded in the March 17 version to leave out the word “engineering.” Indeed, while the Feb. 16 version merely downplayed the possibility of the virus having been engineered in a lab, in the March 17 version, the word “engineered” was expunged from the paper altogether.

  Another sentence omitted from the March 17 version noted that “[i]nterestingly, 200 residents of Wuhan did not show coronavirus seroreactivity.” Had the sentence remained, it would have suggested that, unlike other regions in China, no SARS-related viruses were circulating in Wuhan in the years leading up to the pandemic. That makes natural spillover less likely. The director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Shi Zhengli, herself admitted that she never expected a SARS-related virus to emerge in Wuhan. When viruses emerged naturally in the past, they emerged in southern China.

  Shi’s credibility already was coming under fire for failing to disclose that she had the closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2 in her possession for seven years—a point noted early on by Segreto. Additionally, the Wuhan Institute took its entire database of viral sequences offline on Sept. 12, 2019. Despite the Wuhan Institute’s documented deletion and concealment of data, Proximal Origin’s central argument is that SARS-CoV-2 had to be natural since its backbone didn’t match any known backbones.

  However, even before the March 17 version was published, Segreto had stated publicly that Proximal Origin’s central backbone argument was inherently flawed, precisely because there was no way of knowing whether the Chinese lab had published the relevant viral sequences.

  Fauci, Collins, Farrar Roles Improperly Concealed

  The email exchange among Fauci, Farrar, and Collins presents clear evidence that the three men took an active role in shaping the narrative of Proximal Origin. Indeed, a careful comparison of the Feb. 16 and March 17 versions show that the changes made fail to reflect any fundamental change in scientific analysis.

  Instead, the authors employed linguistic changes and wholesale deletions that appear to have been designed to reinforce the natural origin narrative.

  Close scrutiny of the email discussions by the three scientists also suggests that there was no legal justification for redacting any of the newly released information in the first place.

  

  Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, talks to members of the press prior to an event at the State Dining Room of the White House on Jan. 21, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

  Science journals require that contributions to scientific papers need to be acknowledged. According to Nature’s publishing guidelines, “[c]ontributors who do not meet all criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgements section.” The newly revealed sections of the still-redacted emails appear to confirm that Fauci, Farrar, and Collins met the criteria for acknowledgement but their names have never appeared on any published version of Proximal Origin, suggesting that the three didn’t want their involvement in the paper’s creation to be known.

  Collins Asked Fauci ‘to Help Put Down’ Fox News Story

  A final email released by the House Republicans shows that Collins wrote Fauci several months later on April 16, 2020, telling him that he had hoped that Proximal Origin would have “settled” the origin debate, but it apparently hadn’t since Bret Baier of Fox News was reporting that sources were confident the virus had come out of a lab.

  Collins asked Fauci whether the NIH could do something “to help put down this very destructive conspiracy” that seemed to be “growing momentum.” Collins also suggested that he and Fauci ask the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to weigh in. As was revealed in previous emails released under FOIA, Fauci’s group had pushed NASEM in early Feb. 2020 to promote the natural origin narrative.

  Fauci told Collins that the lab leak theory was a “shiny object” that would go away in time. However, the next day, Fauci took responsive action when he categorically dismissed the possibility of a lab origin of COVID-19 during on April 17, 2020, White House press conference. In doing so, Fauci cited the Proximal Origin paper as corroboration of his claims. Notably, Fauci feigned independence, telling reporters that he couldn’t recall the names of the authors. Unbeknownst to reporters and the public at the time, four out of the five authors had participated in Fauci’s Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference.

  Now, we know that Fauci had involvement in shaping the very article that he cited.

  Fauci’s intervention at the April 17 White House briefing was effective, since media interest in the lab leak theory quickly waned. It didn’t resurface until May 2021, when former New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade published an article discussing the likelihood of a lab leak. Wade noted that “[a] virologist keen to continue his career would be very attentive to Fauci’s and Farrar’s wishes.”

  Notably, Segreto had raised a similar concern after Proximal Origin was first published in February 2020, asking whether certain virologists were scared that if the truth came out, their research activities would be curtailed.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/20/2022 – 19:50

• Biden Authorizes Rush Deliveries Of US Weapons To Ukraine Via Baltic Allies
  Biden Authorizes Rush Deliveries Of US Weapons To Ukraine Via Baltic Allies

  The Biden administration is pulling the trigger on sending anti-tank weapons and air defense systems into Ukraine in order assist in repelling any potential Russian invasion. Further the White House has “notified Congress it intends to send five Mi-17 Transport Helicopters to Ukraine, officials Say,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

  But this weapons transfer will not be done directly, instead, it will be facilitated through third party allies – namely Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. The proposed plan for some further limited military assistance to Ukraine was revealed earlier this week, but as of Thursday afternoon the administration has authorized it. 

  

  CBS News is also reporting that “U.S. officials confirmed to CBS News that the Biden administration had given permission to several NATO allies to send emergency shipments of U.S.-made weapons — including anti-tank missiles — to Ukraine to reinforce the country’s defenses.”

  The report details, coming just a day after Biden said it was his “guess” that Putin is preparing to “move in” to Ukraine, that—

  State Department sources said allies including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the U.K. were cleared to make “Third Party Transfers” of U.S.-made and supplied equipment to Ukraine, which one official described as part of a race “to get as much gear to the Ukrainians as quickly as possible.”

  Up to this point it’s remained unclear the degree to which the administration might authorize any level of a military response. For years the US has already supplied Ukraine’s army with military equipment, and has even had limited numbers of special forces in the country training Ukrainian counterpart forces. 

  Earlier this week UK’s Defence Secretary Ben Wallace announced a arms shipments for Ukraine, which have been reported ongoing over a period of a last three days on a series of military flights to Kiev…

  Here’s a time-lapse of all of the United Kingdom to #Ukraine weapons airlift flights from the morning of the 17th of January to this very minute on the 19th of January 2022. The UK has no intention of letting Ukraine fall. pic.twitter.com/p4DcNv25mt

  — George Allison (@geoallison) January 19, 2022

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  With Biden now giving the green light on Baltic allies to also begin pouring more weapons into the simmering Donbass conflict, pushing tensions between Moscow and NATO further to the brink, Europe could be closer to seeing the outbreak of all-out war on its periphery. Russia will certainly see this new arms build-up on the Ukrainian side of the border a major provocation, possibly violating its “red lines” regarding NATO presence in Ukraine. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/20/2022 – 19:30

• Netflix Craters On Subscribers Miss, Catastrophic Guidance
  Netflix Craters On Subscribers Miss, Catastrophic Guidance

  Recent earnings reports from streaming giant Netflix have been a mixed bag: the stock tumbled one year ago when the company reported a huge miss in both EPS and new subs, which at 2.2 million was tied for the worst quarter in the past five years, while also reporting a worse than expected outlook for the current quarter. This reversed four quarters ago when Netflix reported a blowout subscriber beat and projected it would soon be cash flow positive, sending its stock soaring to an all time high – if only briefly before again reversing and then tumbling three quarters ago when Netflix again disappointed when it reported a huge subscriber miss and giving dismal guidance, leading to the second quarter when Netflix slumped again after the company missed estimates and guided lower. This again reversed last quarter when Netflix soared after it blew away expectations and guided to a whopper Q4.

  

  Which brings us to today, when after hitting an all time high around $700 in November, the stock slumped to the middle of its range for much of the past two years, with investors on edge to find out not whether the company would confirm its impressive guidance and continue its torrid growth pace. Said otherwise, how many new subscribers did Netflix add in the third quarter… and will Netflix’s “monster quarter for content” translate into outsize subscriber gains? That’s the question Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall asked in a research note Wednesday.

  Unfortunately for NFLX bulls, the answer was a resounding no, because despite beating modestly on revenue and EPS, NFLX missed on Q4 streaming adds, but more importantly, its Q1 subs forecast was an absolute disaster, and at just 2.50 million it was nearly 4 million below the street’s estimate of 6.26 million.

  Here is what NFLX just reported for Q4.

  • EPS $1.33, beating est. 81c
  • Rev. $7.71B, matching est. $7.71B
  • Operating margin 8.2% vs. 14.4% y/y, beating the estimate 6.96%
  • Operating income $631.8 million, down 34% y/y, but also beating the estimate $559.0 million
  • Negative free cash flow $569 million vs. negative $284.0 million y/y, missing the estimate of negative $516.8 million

  So far so good, or at least not terrible. But this is where the wheels comes off, because while the company had previously forecast 8.5 million Q4 paid subs, it achieved just 8.28 million (which still was just above the Wall Street’s downward revised  estimate of 8.13 million), down 2.7% Y/Y…

  

  This is how the company explained this miss:

  We slightly over-forecasted paid net adds in Q4 (8.3m actual compared to the 8.5m paid net adds in both the year ago quarter and our beginning of quarter projection). For the full year 2021, paid net adds totaled 18m vs 37m in 2020. Our service continues to grow globally, with more than 90% of our paid net adds in 2021 coming from outside the UCAN region.

  The Q4 subscriber miss was broken down as follows:

  • UCAN streaming paid net change +1.19 million, +38% y/y, beating the estimate +596,839
  • EMEA streaming paid net change +3.54 million, -21% y/y, beating the estimate +3.45 million
  • LATAM streaming paid net change +970,000, -20% y/y, missing  the estimate +1.23 million
  • APAC streaming paid net change +2.58 million, +30% y/y, missing the estimate +2.91 million

  The punchline: in the US, subscribers had a small gain in the U.S. and Canada — from 74 million in 3Q to 75.2 million in 4Q. Netflix saw bigger growth in EMEA than in North America: from 70.5 million subscribers in 3Q to 74 million in 4Q. And some more context: more than 90% of Netflix’s net adds in 2021 came from outside the U.S. and Canada.

  

  But the real gut punch was the company’s Q1 2022 guidance, where the company not only saw revenue of $7.9 billion, far below the $8.12 billion estimate, and EPS of 2.86 which was also below consensus of $3.37, but the worst of all is that the company now expects just 2.50 million streaming paid subs this quarter, some two-thirds below the consensus of 6.26 million, bringing the company’s total subs to just over 224 million. This would be the worst start to a year since at least 2017!

  

  Bloomberg Intelligence says Netflix’s underwhelming 4Q subscriber additions and weak guidance for 2.5 million gains in 1Q (vs. consensus’ 6.3 million) cast doubts on the long-term growth trajectory and fuel concerns that the service may have reached saturation in many markets. “Flattish operating-margin guidance for 2022 may compound negative sentiment despite a return to breakeven free cash flow.”

  Netflix blamed this lower-than-expected Q1 forecast on new programming, such as “Bridgerton” season two, not coming until March. Subscriber growth hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels, partly due to a “Covid overhang” and partly due to economic hardship, particularly in Latin America, the company said.

  And here is the carnage in table format:

  

  This, as Stanphyl Capital notes, explains why NFLX just announced a big price increase – the growth is gone, so it has to start maximizing revenues in more conventional ways.

  Now you know why $NFLX just announced a big price increase…

  It’s got to start milking the subs it’s got, as it can’t grow enough any more by getting new ones.

  — Stanphyl Capital (@StanphylCap) January 20, 2022

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  Looking at the slump in the streaming part of Netflix business, Bloomberg writes that investors likely want to hear something more concrete and “much more transformative” on the gaming front, particularly after Microsoft’s planned acquisition of Activision Blizzard and the Take-Two-Zynga deal. Netflix has made some moves, including the purchase of Night School Studio, “but I’m not sure that’s going to move the needle for them.”

  To be sure, it wasn’t all dismal news: Netflix reported its series accounted for six out of the 10 most searched shows globally. Those included ‘Squid Game,’ ‘Bridgerton,’ ‘Cobra Kai,’ ‘Sweet Tooth,’ ‘Lupin,’ and ‘Ginny and Georgia.’

  In another ominous twist, instead of focusing on the potential market share, Netflix was surprisingly honest when addressing the competitive landscape saying that “consumers have always had many choices when it comes to their entertainment time – competition that has only intensified over the last 24 months as entertainment companies all around the world develop their own streaming offering.” And then there’s this clear admission that competition is starting to hammer NFLX: “While this added competition may be affecting our marginal growth some, we continue to grow in every country and region in which these new streaming alternatives have launched.” At this point the narrative fell back to the familiar “growth” chatter: “This reinforces our view that the greatest opportunity in entertainment is the transition from linear to streaming and that with under 10% of total TV screen time in the US, our biggest market, Netflix has tremendous room for growth if we can continue to improve our service.”

  But wait, there was more bad news news, as the company projected that for 2022, it is currently targeting an operating margin of just 19%-20%, explaining that its operating margin outlook is driven by two main factors.

  • First, as seen in the chart below, we delivered above the three percentage point annual linear progression over the past two years (average of four percentage points per year).
  • Second, NFLX said that the US dollar “has strengthened meaningfully against most other currencies. With ~60% of our revenue outside of the US due to our international success, we estimate that the US dollar’s appreciation over the past six months has cost us roughly $1 billion in expected 2022 revenue (as a reminder, we don’t hedge).” Well… maybe it’s time to hedge!?  And so with the vast majority of our expenses in US dollars, this translates into an estimated two percentage point negative impact on our 2022 operating margin.

  

  In hopes of easing investor fears, the company said that as it has written in the past, “over the medium term we believe we can adjust our pricing and cost structure for a stronger US dollar world. In the near term, we want to continue to invest appropriately in our business and don’t want to over-react to F/X fluctuations to the detriment of our long term growth. There is no change to our goal of steadily growing our operating margin at an average increase of three percentage points per year over any few year period”

  As usual, the company’s cash burn was topical, as NFLX burned another $569 million in the quarter. This is what it disclosed in the letter:

  Net cash generated by operating activities in Q4 was -$403 million vs. -$138 million in the prior year period. Free cash flow (FCF) for the quarter was -$569 million vs. -$284 million in Q4‘20. For the full year 3 2021, FCF amounted to -$159 million, in-line with our expectation for “approximately break-even.

  We anticipate being free cash flow positive for the full year 2022 and beyond. As a reminder, we prioritize our cash to reinvest in our core business and to fund new growth opportunities like gaming, followed by selective acquisitions. We’re also targeting $10-$15 billion of gross debt. We finished Q4 with gross debt of $15.5 billion and we’ll pay down $700 million of our senior notes due in Q1’22. After satisfying those uses of cash, excess cash above our minimum cash levels will be returned to shareholders via stock repurchases.

  Blah blah blah: here is the bottom line – the only time Netflix has been cash flow positive in its entire history was when covid shut down the world. And now, covid is over and the company has pulled forward some 5 years of demand. Good luck.

  

  And sure enough the market seems to agree – in light of all these dismal developments, led by the catastrophic subscriber guidance, which is payback for years of pulled forward demand thanks to stimmies and omicron, the stock is cratering after hours tumbling over $100 or a whopping 20% after hours to $411. Putting this in context, the stock was at $700 on November 17, barely two months ago.

  

  Today’s drop means NFLX is down the most since its Oct. 2014 earnings plunge, and has wiped out two years of gains.

  If bulls were hoping for some cheerful pep talk, they’ll be disappointed by the following quote from Miller Tabak’s Matt Maley: “NFLX had already declined 26% before they reported earnings. A lot of people hoped that the earnings report would be the catalyst for a rally in this stock — the first FAANG stock to report earnings. Instead, it’s falling even further, so that’s going to take even more confidence away from investors.”

  And while NFLX just lost 20% of its market cap, at least its (poorer) shareholders get some forceful ESG statements:

  

  What was the saying, “get woke, go broke”?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/20/2022 – 19:13

• Lacy Hunt: Negative Real Rates Are A Strong Recession Warning
  Lacy Hunt: Negative Real Rates Are A Strong Recession Warning

  Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

  In his 4th Quarter Review and Outlook, Lacy provides some interesting charts on negative real rates and recessions.

  

  Please consider the Hoisington Management Quarterly Review and Outlook Fourth Quarter 2021. Emphasis Mine

  Real Treasury Bond Yields

  Real Treasury bond yields fell into deeply negative territory in 2021. In elementary economic models, this event, taken in isolation, would qualify as a plus for economic growth in 2022 and would be consistent with the strength indicated by fourth quarter 2021 tracking models.

  Lacy a different view however. His analysis shows that negative real yields are associated with recessions. 

  Debt overhang and demographics make the matter worse.

  

  History

  Since 1870, the starting point of reliable data, only 24 full yearly averages were negative, or just 16% of the 152 readings over this time span.

  Detailed parsing of the series reveals that 12 of those occurrences fell in the spans from 1914 to 1920 and 1939 to 1953, both of which were dominated by major military engagements and their subsequent demobilization – World Wars I and II and the Korean War.

  Excluding the 1914-20 and the 1939-53 periods from the post 1870 sample still leaves a robust sample of 130 readings. During this lengthy span, cyclical and secular economic conditions resulted in a negative yearly average for real Treasury bond yields twelve times, or just 8% of the time. In the eleven cases prior to 2021, nine of the negative real yield periods coincided with recessions – 1902-03, 1907, 1910, 1912, 1937, 1974-75, and 1980.

  Real long maturity yields were negative in 1934, which while not a recession year, happened during the horrific conditions of the Great Depression (1929-1939). In only one case, 1979, does the negative real yield happen during an economic expansion when the economy is not in a highly depressed state.

  Debt Overhangs and Real Interest Rates

  The level of indebtedness of the economy is another of the critical moving parts in assessing future economic growth. Based on empirical evidence, theory and peer reviewed scholarly research, the massive secular increase in debt levels relative to economic activity has undermined economic growth, which has in turn, served to force real long-term Treasury yields lower. This pattern has been evident in both the United States and the more heavily indebted Japanese and European economies.

  Real 10-Year Government Bond Yields 

  

  Economic research provides additional insight and evidence as to why interest rates fall to low levels and then remain in an extended state of depression in times of extreme over-indebtedness of the government sector. While differing in purpose and scope, research has documented that extremely high levels of governmental indebtedness suppress real per capita GDP. In the distant past, debt financed government spending may have been preceded by stronger sustained economic performance, but that is no longer the case.

  When governments accelerate debt over a certain level to improve faltering economic conditions, it actually slows economic activity. While governmental action may be required for political reasons, governments would be better off to admit that traditional tools would only serve to compound existing problems. For a restless constituency calling for quick answers to economic distress and where inaction would be likened to an uncaring and insensitive attitude, this is a virtually impossible task.

  Carmen Reinhart, Vincent Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff (which will be referred to as RR&R), in the Summer 2012 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives linked extreme sustained over indebtedness with the level of interest rates. In this publication of the American Economic Association, they identify 26 historical major public debt overhang episodes in 22 advanced economies, characterized by gross public debt/GDP ratios exceeding 90% for at least five years, a requirement that eliminates purely cyclical increases in debt as well as debt caused by wars. They found that the economic growth rate is reduced by slightly more than a third, compared when the debt metric is not met.

  Persistent Global Weakness

  Advanced Economies (AD)

  In 2021, the Japanese, Euro Area and Chinese economies, in comparative terms, underperformed the U.S. economy. This pattern should continue this year. Due to more massive debt overhangs and poorer demographics, real GDP in Japan and the Euro Area in the third quarter of 2021 was still below the pre-pandemic level of 2019. The U.S. in this time period managed to eke out a small gain. The dispersion between the U.S., on the one hand, and China and Japan, on the other hand, may be even greater. Scholarly forensic evaluations have found substantial over-reporting of GDP growth in China and now, similar problems have been revealed in Japan.

  Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on December 15, 2021, that overstated construction orders had the effect of inflating the country’s economic growth figures for years. Consequently, the marginal revenue product of debt is even lower than reported therefore so is the velocity of money for both Japan and China. Interestingly, Bloomberg syndicated columnist and veteran Wall Street research director Richard Cookson makes a strong case that “China looks a lot like Japan did in the 1980s.”

  Emerging Market Economies (EM)

  The sharp surge in inflation in 2021 has resulted in far greater damage to the EM economies than the U.S. for three reasons. First, a much higher proportion of household budgets are allocated to necessities than in the United States since real per capita income levels are much lower than in the U.S. Second, numerous EM central banks increased interest rates in 2021.

  Another problem emerges as most of the EM debt is denominated in dollars. When EM currencies slump as in 2021, the external costs of servicing and amortizing debt add an additional burden on their borrowers.

  Growth Obstacles

  In 2022, several headwinds will weigh on the U.S. economy. These include negative real interest rates combined with a massive debt overhang, poor domestic and global demographics, and a foreign sector that will drain growth from the domestic economy. The EM and AD economies will both serve to be a restraint on U.S. growth this year and perhaps significantly longer. The negative real interest rates signal that capital is being destroyed and with it the incentive to plough funds into physical investment.

  Demographics continue to stagnate in the United States and throughout the world. U.S. population growth increased a mere 0.1% in the 12 months ended July 1, 2021. This was the slimmest rise since our nation was founded in the 18th century, along with two other firsts: (1) the natural increase in population was less than the net immigration, and (2) the increase in population was less than one million, the first time since 1937. The birth rate also dropped again.

  Inflation

  Inflation has been one of the most widely reported and discussed economic factors in the past year. Surging energy, rents, building materials, automotive, food and supply disruptions have boosted the year-over-year rise in the inflation rate to the fastest pace in decades. While some see this increase as a good economic sign, its increase actually had the effect of reducing real earnings by 2%. Even though unemployment fell in 2021, consumers became more alarmed by the drop in real wages according to surveys.

  With money growth likely to slow even more sharply in response to tapering by the FOMC, the velocity of money in a major downward trend, coupled with increased global over-indebtedness, poor demographics and other headwinds at work, the faster observed inflation of last year should unwind noticeably in 2022.

  Due to poor economic conditions in major overseas economies, 10- and 30-year government bond yields in Japan, Germany, France, and many other European countries are much lower than in the United States. Foreign investors will continue to be attracted to long-term U.S. Treasury bond yields. Investment in Treasury bonds should also have further appeal to domestic investors, as economic growth disappoints and inflation recedes in 2022.

  Thanks to Lacy Hunt 

  Thanks again to Lacy Hunt for another excellent Hoisington quarterly review. The above snips are just a small portion of the full article. 

  As of this writing, the article is not yet posted for public viewing but should be available at the top link soon.

  When Does the Sizzling Economy Hit a Recession Brick Wall?

  I addressed many of the same points on January 17 in When Does the Sizzling Economy Hit a Recession Brick Wall?

  I discuss productivity, demographics, and unproductive debt.

  Something Happened

  “Something has happened in the last 30 years, which is different from the past,” says Minneapolis Fed president Neel Kashkari.

  Yes it has and the Fed is clueless as to what it is.

  The answer is unproductive debt is a huge drag on the economy. And the Fed needs to keep interest rates low to support that debt. 

  When Does Recession Hit?

  If the Fed does get in three rate hikes in 2022, then 2023 or 2024. And it may not even take three hikes.

  Also, please see China’ Central Bank Cuts Interest Rates As Consumer Spending Dives

  Few believe China GDP statistics.

  China posts a GDP target and generally hits it despite questionable economic reports, electrical use, etc., and with a property sector implosion.

  Slowing Global Economy

  China did not decoupled from the global economy in 2007 and the US won’t in 2022.

  For discussion, please see US GDP Forecasts Stumble Then Take a Dive After Retail Sales Data.

  Finally, please see The Fed Expects 6 Rate Hikes By End of 2023 – I Don’t and You Shouldn’t Either

  *  *  *

  Like these reports? If so, please Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/20/2022 – 19:10

• Target CEO Says Consumers To Shop Less, Stay Home Amid Inflationary Storm
  Target CEO Says Consumers To Shop Less, Stay Home Amid Inflationary Storm

  Consumer prices soared the most in 40 years in December, a stunning 7% from a year earlier that is crushing real wage gains and sending President Biden’s polling numbers to a new record low. The Federal Reserve is expected to embark on an inflation-crushing mission with the first-rate hike expected in March to tame inflation.

  According to Target’s top executive, high inflation eating into wage gains is expected to directly impact US consumers who will be forced to drive less, eat at home, and reduce their shopping habits. 

  Chief Executive Officer Brian Cornell told attendees at a National Retail Federation event in New York on Sunday that high inflation will derail consumer spending patterns. Many will resort to cheaper generic-brand goods to save money. 

  “Some of the historical ways consumers react to inflation will play out again in 2022,” Cornell said.

  He noted consumers would “drive fewer miles, and you’ll consolidate the number of times and locations where you shop. You’ll probably spend a little more eating at home versus your favorite restaurant, and you might make some trade-offs between a national brand and an own brand.”

  Compared to the last two years of stimulus-fueled retail spending, Cornell expects spending patterns to change. He said a lot about the consumer would be understood in the next “60, 90, 120 days” in adapting to the high inflation environment. 

  As part of the rapid recovery, fueled by trillions of dollars in monetary and fiscal aid, prices for cars, gas, food, and furniture rose sharply in 2021. As consumers increased spending, supply chains became snarled, and prices increased further. 

  In the new year, US inflation pressures show very little easing, and some economists predict the peak could be nearing. The high inflation problem has led rate markets to price in 4 rate hikes by December, with the first live meeting expected in March. 

  Many consumers have never seen anything like this because they weren’t around in the 1970s and early 1980s of high inflation. It only took then-Fed Chair Paul Volcker to increase interest rates to double digits to tame inflation which sent the economy into a deep recession. 

  High inflation has put Biden on the spot ahead of midterms. The latest polling data shows the president’s popularity sunk to a new low this week. 

  

  Consumers feel the pinch around them, from the supermarket to the gas station. Cornell’s outlook for the consumer is gloomy, suggesting they might go in hibernation mode to weather the inflationary storm. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/20/2022 – 18:50

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• Only Cold War Fools Hit Replay On Doomsday
  Only Cold War Fools Hit Replay On Doomsday

  Authored by William Astore via Common Dreams,

  In the early 1960s, at the height of America’s original Cold War with the Soviet Union, my old service branch, the Air Force, sought to build 10,000 land-based nuclear missiles. These were intended to augment the hundreds of nuclear bombers it already had, like the B-52s featured so memorably in the movie Dr. Strangelove. Predictably, massive future overkill was justified in the name of “deterrence,” though the nuclear war plan in force back then was more about obliteration. It featured a devastating attack on the Soviet Union and communist China that would kill an estimated 600 million people in six months (the equivalent of 100 Holocausts, notes Daniel Ellsberg in his book, The Doomsday Machine). Slightly saner heads finally prevailed—in the sense that the Air Force eventually got “only” 1,000 of those Minuteman nuclear missiles.

  Despite the strategic arms limitation talks between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the dire threat of nuclear Armageddon persisted, reaching a fresh peak in the 1980s during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. At the time, he memorably declared the Soviet Union to be an “evil empire,” while nuclear-capable Pershing II and ground-launched cruise missiles were rushed to Europe. At that same moment, more than a few Europeans, joined by some Americans, took to the streets, calling for a nuclear freeze—an end to new nuclear weapons and the destabilizing deployment of the ones that already existed. If only…

  

  It was in this heady environment that, in uniform, I found myself working in the ultimate nuclear redoubt of the Cold War. I was under 2,000 feet of solid granite in a North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD) command post built into Cheyenne Mountain at the southern end of the Colorado front range that includes Pikes Peak. When off-duty, I used to hike up a trail that put me roughly level with the top of Cheyenne Mountain. There, I saw it from a fresh perspective, with all its antennas blinking, ready to receive and relay warnings and commands that could have ended in my annihilation in a Soviet first strike or retaliatory counterstrike.

  Yet, to be honest, I didn’t give much thought to the possibility of Armageddon. As a young Air Force lieutenant, I was caught up in the minuscule role I was playing in an unimaginably powerful military machine. And as a hiker out of uniform, I would always do my best to enjoy the bracing air, the bright sunshine, and the deep blue skies as I climbed near the timberline in those Colorado mountains. Surrounded by such natural grandeur, I chose not to give more than a moment’s thought to the nightmarish idea that I might be standing at ground zero of the opening act of World War III.  Because there was one thing I knew with certainty: if the next war went nuclear, whether I was on-duty under the mountain or off-duty hiking nearby, I was certainly going to be dead.

  Then came 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Cold War was over! America had won! Rather than nightmares of the Red Storm Rising sort that novelist Tom Clancy had imagined or Hollywood’s Red Dawn in which there was an actual communist invasion of this country, we could now dream of “peace dividends,” of America becoming a normal country in normal times.

  It was, as the phrase went, “morning again in America”—or, at least, it could have been. Yet here I sit, 30 years later, at sea level rather than near the timberline, stunned by the resurgence of a twenty-first-century version of anticommunist hysteria and at the idea of a new cold war with Russia, the rump version of the Soviet Union of my younger days, joined by an emerging China, both still ostensibly conspiring to endanger our national security, or so experts in and out of the Pentagon tell us.

  Excuse me while my youthful 28-year-old self asks my cranky 58-year-old self a few questions: What the hell happened? Dammit, we won the Cold War three decades ago. Decisively so! How, then, could we have allowed a new one to emerge? Why would any sane nation want to refight a war that it had already won at enormous cost? Who in their right mind would want to hit the “replay” button on such a costly, potentially cataclysmic strategic paradigm as deterrence through MAD, or mutually assured destruction?

  Meet the New Cold War—Same as the Old One

  Quite honestly, the who, the how, and the why depress me. The “who” is simple enough: the military-industrial-congressional complex, which finds genocidal nuclear weapons to be profitable, even laudable. Leading the charge of the latest death brigade is my old service, the Air Force. Its leaders want new ICBMs, several hundred of them in fact, with a potential price tag of $264 billion, to replace the Minutemen that still sit on alert, waiting to inaugurate death on an unimaginable scale, not to speak of a global nuclear winter, if they’re ever launched en masse. Not content with such new missiles, the Air Force also desires new strategic bombers, B-21 Raiders to be precise (the “21” for our century, the “Raider” in honor of General Jimmy Doolittle’s morale-boosting World War II attack on Tokyo a few months after Pearl Harbor). The potential price tag: somewhere to the north of $200 billion through the year 2050.

  New nuclear missiles and strategic bombers obviously don’t come cheap. Those modernized holocaust-producers are already estimated to cost the American taxpayer half-a-trillion dollars over the next three decades. Honestly, though, I doubt anyone knows the true price, given the wild cost overruns that seem to occur whenever the Air Force builds anything these days. Just look at the $1.7 trillion F-35 fighter, for example, where the “F” apparently stands for Ferrari or, if you prefer brutal honesty, failure.

  The “how” is also simple enough. The vast military machine I was once part of justifies such new weaponry via the tried-and-true (even if manifestly false) tactics of the Cold War. Start with threat inflation. In the old days, politicians and generals touted false bomber and missile “gaps.” Nowadays, we hear about China building missile silos, as if these would pose a new sort of dire threat to us. (They wouldn’t, assuming that China is dumb enough to build them.) A recent New Yorker article on Iran’s ballistic missile program is typical of the breed. Citing a Pentagon estimate, the author suggests “that China could have at least a thousand [nuclear] bombs by 2030.” Egad! Be afraid!

  Yet the article neglects to mention America’s overwhelmingly superior nuclear weapons and the actual number of nuclear warheads and bombs our leaders have at their disposal. (The current numbers: roughly 5,600 nuclear warheads for the U.S., 350 for China.) At the same time, Iran, which has no nuclear weapons, is nonetheless defined as a serious threat, “an increasingly shrewd rival,” in the same article. A “rival” – how absurd! A nation with no nukes isn’t a rival to the superpower that nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, killing 250,000 Japanese, and planned to utterly destroy the Soviet Union and China in the 1960s. Believe me, nobody, but nobody, rivals this country’s military when it comes to apocalyptic scenarios—and the mindset as well as the ability to achieve them.

  On a nuclear spectrum, Iran poses no threat and China is readily deterred, indeed completely overmatched, just with the U.S. Navy’s fleet of Trident-missile-firing submarines. To treat Iran as a “rival” and China as a nuclear “near-peer” is the worst kind of threat inflation (and imagining nuclear war of any sort is a horror beyond all measure).

  The “why” is also simple enough, and it disgusts me. Weapons makers, though driven by profit, pose as job-creators. They talk about “investing” in new nukes; they mention the need to “modernize” the arsenal, as if nuclear weapons have an admirable return on investment as well as an expiration date. What they don’t talk about (and never will) is how destabilizing, redundant, unnecessary, immoral, and unimaginably ghastly such weapons are.

  Nuclear weapons treat human beings as matter to be irradiated and obliterated. One of the better cinematic depictions of this nightmare came in the 1991 movie Terminator II when Sarah Connor, who knows what’s coming, is helpless to save herself, no less children on a playground, when the nukes start exploding. It’s a scene that should be seared into all our minds as we think about the hellish implications of the weapons the U.S. military is clamoring for.

  In the late 1980s, when I was still in Cheyenne Mountain, I watched the tracks of Soviet nuclear missiles as they terminated at American cities. Sure, it only happened on screen in the missile warning center, driven by a scenario tape simulating an attack, but that was more than enough for me. Yet, today, my government is moving in a direction—both in funding the “modernization” of the American arsenal and in creating a new version of the Cold War of my Air Force days—that could once again make that old scenario tape I saw plausible in what remains of my lifetime.

  Excuse me, but where has the idea of nuclear disarmament gone? A scant 15 years ago, old Cold War hands like Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, and Sam Nunn, joined by our “hope and change” president Barack Obama, promoted the end of nuclear terror through the actual elimination of nuclear weapons. But in 2010 Obama threw that possibility away in an attempt to secure Senate support for new strategic arms reduction talks with the Russians. Unsurprisingly, senators and representatives in western states like Wyoming and North Dakota, which thrive off Air Force bases that bristle with nuclear bombers and missiles, quickly abandoned the spirit of Obama’s grand bargain and to this day remain determined to field new nuclear weapons.

  Not More, But No More

  This country narrowly averted disaster in the old Cold War and back then we had leaders of some ability and probity like Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. All this new cold war rhetoric and brinksmanship may not end nearly as well in a plausible future administration led, if not by Donald Trump himself, then by some self-styled Trumpist warrior like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo or Senator Tom Cotton. They would, I suspect, be embraced by an increasing number of evangelicals and Christian nationalists in the military who might, in prophetic terms, find nuclear Armageddon to be a form of fulfillment.

  Ironically, I read much of Red Storm Rising, Tom Clancy’s World War III thriller, in 1987 while working a midnight shift in Cheyenne Mountain. Thankfully, that red storm never rose, despite a climate that all too often seemed conducive to it. But why now recreate the conditions for a new red storm, once again largely driven by our own fears as well as the profit- and power-driven fantasies of the military-industrial-congressional complex? Such a storm could well end in nuclear war, despite pledges to the contrary. If a war of that sort is truly unwinnable, which it is, our military shouldn’t be posturing about fighting and “winning” one.

  

  I can tell you one thing with certainty: our generals know one word and it’s not “win,” it’s more. More nuclear missiles. More nuclear bombers. They’ll never get enough. The same is true of certain members of Congress and the president. So, the American people need to learn two words, no more, and say them repeatedly to those same generals and their enablers, when they come asking for almost $2 trillion for that nuclear modernization program of theirs.

  In that spirit, I ask you to join a young Air Force lieutenant as he walks past Cheyenne Mountain’s massive blast door and down the long tunnel. Join him in taking a deep breath as you exit that darkness into clear crystalline skies and survey the city lights beneath you and the pulse of humanity before you. Another night’s duty done; another night that nuclear war didn’t come; another day to enjoy the blessings of this wonder-filled planet of ours.

  America’s new cold war puts those very blessings, that wonder, in deep peril. It’s why we must walk ever so boldly out of tunnels built by fear and greed and never return to them. We need to say “no more” to new nuclear weapons and recommit to the elimination of all such weaponry everywhere. We had a chance to embark on such a journey 30 years ago in the aftermath of the first Cold War. We had another chance when Barack Obama was elected. Both times we failed.

  It’s finally time for this country to succeed in something again—something noble, something other than the perpetuation of murderous war and the horrific production of genocidal weaponry.  After all, only fools replay scenarios that end in doomsday.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/20/2022 – 00:05

• 'The Enigma': Sothebys To Auction Off Massive 555.55-Carat Black Diamond From Space
  ‘The Enigma’: Sothebys To Auction Off Massive 555.55-Carat Black Diamond From Space

  Sotheby’s Dubai has unveiled a 555.55-carat black diamond that’s believed to have come from outer space.

  

  Dubbed “The Enigma,” the rare jem was shown to journalists during a Monday press conference ahead of its anticipated sale by the auction house in February.

  According to NPR, Sothebys expects the diamond to fetch at least 5 million British pounds (US$6.8 million), and may accept cryptocurrency as a method of payment.

  Sophie Stevens, a jewelry specialist at Sotheby’s Dubai, told The Associated Press that the number five bears an importance significance to the diamond, which has 55 facets as well. –NPR

  “The shape of the diamond is based on the Middle-Eastern palm symbol of the Khamsa, which stands for strength and it stands for protection,” said Stevens. Khamsa means ‘five’ in Arabic.

  “So there’s a nice theme of the number five running throughout the diamond,” she added.

  From space?

  Black diamonds – known as a ‘carbonados’ are extremely rare, and are only found in Brazil and Central Africa. They are believed to have come from space after scientists analyzed their carbon isotopes and high hydrogen content.

  According to Stevens, “With the carbonado diamonds, we believe that they were formed through extraterrestrial origins, with meteorites colliding with the Earth and either forming chemical vapor disposition or indeed coming from the meteorites themselves.”

   

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/19/2022 – 23:45

• How Good Is China's J-20 Stealth Fighter Jet?
  How Good Is China’s J-20 Stealth Fighter Jet?

  By Richard Bitzinger, an independent international security analyst. He was previously a senior fellow with the Military Transformations Program at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore. First published in the Epoch Times.

  How good is China’s most advanced fighter jet, the J-20? The J-20 is a “fifth-generation” combat aircraft, which ostensibly puts it in the same league as the U.S. F-22 and F-35.

  

  Fifth-generation fighters have certain common characteristics: very low visibility (stealth), the ability to fly at supersonic speeds without using an afterburner (called supercruise), and, most importantly, a highly advanced radar and suite of avionics and onboard computers for “networked data fusion,” enabling situational awareness in the battlespace.

  Theoretically, a fifth-generation fighter jet is nearly invisible to ground-based air defenses and other aircraft, and it can detect and attack threats from far away.

  At the moment, most modern air forces fly what we call “fourth-generation” or “fourth-generation-plus” (4G+) combat aircraft. Fourth-generation fighters include the latest versions of the American-made F-16 and F/A-18 and Russia’s Su-30, while the Anglo-German-Italian-Spanish Eurofighter Typhoon, the French Rafale, and the Swedish Gripen are examples of 4G+ combat aircraft.

  Technologically, fourth-generation and 4G+ fighters date from the 1970s and 1980s, although most have undergone significant upgrades over the years. All are multirole aircraft, capable of both air-to-air and air-to-ground missions. They are highly maneuverable, use fly-by-wire flight controls, and can launch “fire-and-forget” active radar-guided air-to-air missiles. 4G+ fighters, in addition, possess a modicum of stealth and improved avionics, such as an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar.

  In general, most fourth-generation and 4G+ fighter jets are basically the same. A Venn diagram of their capabilities would show a lot of overlap. The difference is mainly in the number of engines they have (one or two).

  So how does the J-20 stack up? In the first place, the J-20 is certainly the best fighter jet in the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), but this is a skinniest-kid-at-fat-camp kind of argument. The “best of the rest” of the PLAAF fighter force are the J-10—an indigenously developed combat aircraft initiated in the 1980s—and the J-11, basically a reverse-engineered Soviet Su-27, a plane that first flew in the 1990s.

  

  Although heavily upgraded over the years, the J-10 and J-11 are barely fourth-generation fighters. Going up against comparable combat aircraft flown by better-trained pilots (such as Taiwanese F-16s or Japanese F-15s), these planes would be in a decidedly perilous situation.

  Hence, the PLAAF’s need for the J-20. According to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the J-20 is an advanced multirole stealth fighter fulfilling both air-to-air and air-to-ground combat roles.

  CSIS quotes a 2016 report by the U.S. Department of Defense that states that “the J-20 represents a critical step in China’s efforts to develop advanced aircraft to improve its regional power projection capabilities and to strengthen its ability to strike regional airbases and facilities.”

  A U.S. Naval War College report adds that the J-20, once deployed, would “immediately become the most advanced aircraft deployed by any East Asian Power.”

  That said, what we know—and just as importantly, what we do not know—about the J-20 throws a bit of cold water on these assessments. In the first place, details about the J-20’s design undercut assertions about its apparent stealthiness. For one thing, the plane is huge—more than 2 meters (about 6.5 feet) longer than the U.S. F-22—and it uses canards (winglets) at the front of the airframe for improved maneuverability. Both of these features make the J-20 more detectable by radar.

  Moreover, the J-20 appears to lack nozzle designs that reduce the heat signature coming from its engine exhaust. Therefore, the J-20 may only be stealthy “from the front,” according to aviation expert Richard Aboulafia,

  The J-20 is also likely underpowered. Early versions used a small Russian engine, which was later replaced by the indigenous WS-20 turbofan; this engine, however, has had its share of teething problems. It’s possible, therefore, that the J-20 is incapable of supercruise.

  Secondly, what we cannot see should also leave us questioning the aircraft’s capabilities. In particular, we cannot know what kind of radar, sensors, avionics, and computers that are internal to the J-20 or how good they are; we mainly infer from what we know about other fifth-generation fighters.

  CSIS, for example, claims that the J-20 is “slated” to carry a variety of advanced systems, including “an [AESA radar], a chin-mounted infrared/electro-optic search and track sensor, and a passive electro-optical detection system that will provide 360-degree spherical coverage around the aircraft.” This assessment, however, is based on the argument that “comparable systems” can be found on the U.S. F-35.

  

  It’s impossible, short of espionage, to know how good the systems inside the J-20 actually are (Western intelligence agencies might be privy to some of this information, but they’re not talking). It’s highly likely, however, that avionics on the F-22 and F-35—especially those systems for sensor and data fusion, situational awareness and connectivity—are head-and-shoulders above those of the J-20.

  Consequently, analysts like Aboulafia and John Venable of Heritage Foundation believe that the U.S. fifth-generation fighter would easily best the J-20 in a modern air-to-air contest, which is based on long-range “first look/first shoot” kinds of engagements, rather than any kind of “Top Gun” dogfight.

  The F-22, with its superior stealth, radar, and precision weapons, would “destroy [the J-20] instantly,” according to Aboulafia.

  It’s likely that the Chinese are aware of the J-20’s shortcomings, and perhaps that’s why the PLAAF has so far fielded only “limited numbers” of the aircraft. Still, it’s as dangerous to “under-guesstimate” the potential of the J-20 as it is to exaggerate its capabilities.

  The PLA has been able to appreciably narrow its military-technological gap with the West over the past 20 years or so. It’s incumbent on the West, therefore, to keep moving the “technological goalposts” in order to stay comfortably ahead.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/19/2022 – 23:25

• East Hampton Airport To Go Private, Ban Chartered Flights Over Noise Concerns
  East Hampton Airport To Go Private, Ban Chartered Flights Over Noise Concerns

  Private jet and helicopter charters into the East Hampton Airport could be a thing of the past as the town’s board is expected to take the public airport under private control by early March, according to Bloomberg. 

  The move will effectively ban millionaires who rent aircraft and only allow billionaires who own their jets to fly into the airport. 

  On Tuesday, Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc released a statement that said the town’s board would deactivate the airport and reopen it as a limited facility where planes and helicopters can only land with permission. He said the shift would allow the town to have more oversight on air traffic which has surged in recent years, not just because of the pandemic (with folks moving out of NYC to The Hamptons) but also the rise of ride-share apps that make it easier to catch a helicopter or private plane flight. 

  

  The logic behind the privatization is limiting air travel to and from the airport because it has created constant noise and environmental pollution and disturbs some surrounding communities. 

  However, not everyone in the ultra-rich beach town, a playground for Wall Street elites, is enthused by the decision to take the airport private. About 80% of the residents in the Village of East Hampton oppose the move and say it would redirect air traffic to other towns and could hurt their local economy. 

  The airport is expected to close at the end of February and reopen under private control in early March. 

  Nothing is more laughable than the haves and the have-mores (or millionaires versus billionaires) of The Hamptons fighting over who gets to fly into the local airport. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/19/2022 – 23:05

• The Last Days Of The COVIDian Cult
  The Last Days Of The COVIDian Cult

  Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

  This isn’t going to be pretty, folks. The downfall of a death cult rarely is. There is going to be wailing and gnashing of teeth, incoherent fanatical jabbering, mass deleting of embarrassing tweets. There’s going to be a veritable tsunami of desperate rationalizing, strenuous denying, shameless blame-shifting, and other forms of ass-covering, as suddenly former Covidian Cult members make a last-minute break for the jungle before the fully-vaxxed-and-boosted “Safe and Effective Kool-Aid” servers get to them.

  

  Yes, that’s right, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, the official Covid narrative is finally falling apart, or is being hastily disassembled, or historically revised, right before our eyes. The “experts” and “authorities” are finally acknowledging that the “Covid deaths” and “hospitalization” statistics are artificially inflated and totally unreliable (which they have been from the very beginning), and they are admitting that their miracle “vaccines” don’t work (unless you change the definition of the word “vaccine”), and that they have killed a few people, or maybe more than a few people, and that lockdowns were probably “a serious mistake.”

  I am not going to bother with further citations. You can surf the Internet as well as I can. The point is, the “Apocalyptic Pandemic” PSYOP has reached its expiration date. After almost two years of mass hysteria over a virus that causes mild-to-moderate common-cold or flu-like symptoms (or absolutely no symptoms whatsoever) in about 95% of the infected and the overall infection fatality rate of which is approximately 0.1% to 0.5%, people’s nerves are shot. We are all exhausted. Even the Covidian cultists are exhausted. And they are starting to abandon the cult en masse.

  It was always mostly just a matter of time. As Klaus Schwab said, “the pandemic represent[ed] a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world.”

  

  It isn’t over, but that window is closing, and our world has not been “reimagined” and “reset,” not irrevocably, not just yet. Clearly, GloboCap underestimated the potential resistance to the Great Reset, and the time it would take to crush that resistance. And now the clock is running down, and the resistance isn’t crushed … on the contrary, it is growing. And there is nothing GloboCap can do to stop it, other than go openly totalitarian, which it can’t, as that would be suicidal. As I noted in a recent column:

  “New Normal totalitarianism — and any global-capitalist form of totalitarianism — cannot display itself as totalitarianism, or even authoritarianism. It cannot acknowledge its political nature. In order to exist, it must not exist. Above all, it must erase its violence (the violence that all politics ultimately comes down to) and appear to us as an essentially beneficent response to a legitimate ‘global health crisis’ …”

  The simulated “global health crisis” is, for all intents and purposes, over. Which means that GloboCap has screwed the pooch. The thing is, if you intend to keep the masses whipped up into a mindless frenzy of anus-puckering paranoia over an “apocalyptic global pandemic,” at some point, you have to produce an actual apocalyptic global pandemic. Faked statistics and propaganda will carry you for a while, but eventually people are going to need to experience something at least resembling an actual devastating worldwide plague, in reality, not just on their phones and TVs.

  Also, GloboCap seriously overplayed their hand with the miracle “vaccines.” Covidian cultists really believed that the “vaccines” would protect them from infection. Epidemiology experts like Rachel Maddow assured them that they would:

  “Now we know that the vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person,” Maddow said on her show the evening of March 29, 2021. 

  “A vaccinated person gets exposed to the virus, the virus does not infect them, the virus cannot then use that person to go anywhere else,” she added with a shrug. “It cannot use a vaccinated person as a host to go get more people.”

  And now they are all sick with … well, a cold, basically, or are “asymptomatically infected,” or whatever. And they are looking at a future in which they will have to submit to “vaccinations” and “boosters” every three or four months to keep their “compliance certificates” current, in order to be allowed to hold a job, attend a school, or eat at a restaurant, which, OK, hardcore cultists are fine with, but there are millions of people who have been complying, not because they are delusional fanatics who would wrap their children’s heads in cellophane if Anthony Fauci ordered them to, but purely out of “solidarity,” or convenience, or herd instinct, or … you know, cowardice.

  Many of these people (i.e., the non-fanatics) are starting to suspect that maybe what we “tin-foil-hat-wearing, Covid-denying, anti-vax, conspiracy-theorist extremists” have been telling them for the past 22 months might not be as crazy as they originally thought. They are back-pedaling, rationalizing, revising history, and just making up all kinds of self-serving bullshit, like how we are now in “a post-vaccine world,” or how “the Science has changed,” or how “Omicron is different,” in order to avoid being forced to admit that they’re the victims of a GloboCap PSYOP and the worldwide mass hysteria it has generated.

  Which … fine, let them tell themselves whatever they need to for the sake of their vanity, or their reputations as investigative journalists, celebrity leftists, or Twitter revolutionaries. If you think these “recovering” Covidian Cult members are ever going to publicly acknowledge all the damage they have done to society, and to people and their families, since March 2020, much less apologize for all the abuse they heaped onto those of us who have been reporting the facts … well, they’re not. They are going to spin, equivocate, rationalize, and lie through their teeth, whatever it takes to convince themselves and their audience that, when the shit hit the fan, they didn’t click heels and go full “Good German.”

  Give these people hell if you need to. I feel just as angry and betrayed as you do. But let’s not lose sight of the ultimate stakes here. Yes, the official narrative is finally crumbling, and the Covidian Cult is starting to implode, but that does not mean that this fight is over. GloboCap and their puppets in government are not going to cancel the whole “New Normal” program, pretend the last two years never happened, and gracefully retreat to their lavish bunkers in New Zealand and their mega-yachts.

  Totalitarian movements and death cults do not typically go down gracefully. They usually go down in a gratuitous orgy of wanton, nihilistic violence as the cult or movement desperately attempts to maintain its hold over its wavering members and defend itself from encroaching reality. And that is where we are at the moment … or where we are going to be very shortly.

  Cities, states, and countries around the world are pushing ahead with implementing the New Normal biosecurity society, despite the fact that there is no longer any plausible justification for it. Austria is going ahead with forced “vaccination.” Germany is preparing to do the same. France is rolling out a national segregation system to punish “the Unvaccinated.” Greece is fining “unvaccinated” pensioners. Australia is operating “quarantine camps.” Scotland. Italy. Spain. The Netherlands. New York City. San Francisco. Toronto. The list goes on, and on, and on.

  I don’t know what is going to happen. I’m not an oracle. I’m just a satirist. But we are getting dangerously close to the point where GloboCap will need to go full-blown fascist if they want to finish what they started. If that happens, things are going to get very ugly. I know, things are already ugly, but I’m talking a whole different kind of ugly. Think Jonestown, or Hitler’s final days in the bunker, or the last few months of the Manson Family.

  That is what happens to totalitarian movements and death cults once the spell is broken and their official narratives fall apart. When they go down, they try to take the whole world with them. I don’t know about you, but I’m hoping we can avoid that. From what I have heard and read, it isn’t much fun.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/19/2022 – 22:45

• Starbucks Joins Growing List Of Companies Abandoning Vax Mandate After SCOTUS Ruling
  Starbucks Joins Growing List Of Companies Abandoning Vax Mandate After SCOTUS Ruling

  Another company has abandoned its plans for a vaccination mandate and mandatory routine testing roughly one week after the Supreme Court killed President Biden’s plans to enforce a corporate vax mandate through OSHA.

  

  To wit, Starbucks has joined the ranks of American megacorps including General Electric in rejecting vaccine mandates by pausing its plans to require baristas to get vaccinated, or receive weekly testing. The decision was reported shortly before President Joe Biden blasted the SCOTUS ruling as a “mistake” during his Wednesday press briefing.

  Instead, Starbucks says it will “strongly encourage” baristas to get vaxxed while encouraging them to disclose their vaccination status. Culver said in the letter that more than 90% of workers already disclosed if they have been vaccinated. Meanwhile, the “vast majority” have been fully vaccinated, according to CNBC.

  Starbucks employs some 228K people across the US.

  Starbucks told employees on Wednesday it would no longer allow baristas to wear cloth masks to work. Instead, they have to wear at least one three-ply, medical-grade mask, or an N95, KN95 or KF94 mask. Furthermore, the company said that starting Thursday, it plans to temporarily expand its policy of requiring workers to self-isolation policy. That means baristas who are exposed at work, have ongoing close contact with someone who tests positive, have symptoms or have tested positive will be instructed to self-isolate, regardless of vaccination status. These workers will be eligible for Starbucks’ self-isolation pay for missed shifts.

  John Culver, the COO and the North American group president, said in the letter that more than 90% of workers had already disclosed if they have been vaccinated, and the “vast majority” have been fully vaccinated.

  “While the [Emergency Temporary Standard] is now paused, I want to emphasize that we continue to believe strongly in the spirit and intent of the mandate,” Culver said in a letter to the company’s baristas that was viewed by CNBC.

  We suspect Starbucks won’t be the last American corporate giant to announce that it is abandoning its vaccination requirement. The decision comes as new research out of Israel and South Africa illustrates just how ineffective mRNA vaccines are at preventing people from being infected with the omicron variant.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/19/2022 – 22:25

• US Has Stepped Up Aircraft Carrier Deployments In South China Sea
  US Has Stepped Up Aircraft Carrier Deployments In South China Sea

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  Reflecting the Pentagon’s new focus on China, US aircraft carrier strike groups almost doubled deployments to the South China Sea in 2021 compared to the year before.

  According to the Beijing-based South China Sea Probing Initiative (SCSPI), US carrier strike groups entered the South China Sea 10 times in 2021, compared with six times in 2020, and five in 2019.

  

  “The US military have drastically reinforced their military deployment in the South China Sea since last year, in terms of training scales, sorties and scenarios,” SCSPI director Hu Bo said Friday, according to The South China Morning Post.

  Hu said that the carrier training patterns have become “more complicated and unpredictable.” In the past, US warships typically entered the South China Sea through the Bashi Channel, a waterway between the Philippines and Taiwan. But Hu said over the past year, the US has diversified its routes, and the time span of the deployments varies.

  The US shows no sign of slowing down its carrier deployments to the South China Sea. The US Navy’s Seventh Fleet said Monday that the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson just wrapped up joint operations in the disputed waters with an amphibious group led by the USS Essex, a landing helicopter dock ship.

  “The USS Carl Vinson strike group fleet includes destroyers, frigates, submarines and supply ships. The new approach of warships sailing between island groups would also require US sailors to boost their skills in traditional terrestrial navigation,” the report underscored. 

  * * *

  F/A-18E & F-35C aboard the USS Carl Vinson, South China Sea. (📸Caden Richmond) pic.twitter.com/QCTm2VDtep

  — Air Power (@MIL_STD) January 17, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/19/2022 – 22:05

• Illegals Can Now Use Arrest Warrants As Identification To Fly: TSA
  Illegals Can Now Use Arrest Warrants As Identification To Fly: TSA

  Illegal immigrants worried about having proper identification to fly can now use an arrest warrant as an alternate form of ID when presenting to airport security, according to a TSA letter obtained by the Daily Caller.

  

  Responding to Republican Texas Rep. Lance Gooden’s Dec. 15 inquiry about illegal migrants flying across the country, TSA Administrator David Pekoske explained that certain Department of Homeland Security (DHS) documents may be considered acceptable forms of alternate identification for non-citizens, including a “Warrant for Arrest of Alien” and a “Warrant of Removal/Deportation.” -Daily Caller

  “TSA’s response confirms the Biden Administration is knowingly putting our national security at risk,” Rep. Gooden told the Caller, adding “Unknown and unvetted immigrants shouldn’t even be in the country, much less flying without proper identification.”

  The TSA’s Pekoske wrote: “TSA is committed to ensuring that all travelers, regardless of immigration status, are pre-screened before they arrive to the airport, have their pre-screening status and identification verified at security checkpoints, and receive appropriate screening based on risk before entering the sterile area of the airport.”

  More via the Daily Caller:

  Pekoske outlined that the alien identification number found on a DHS document is processed through one or both of the following databases: the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) One mobile application or TSA’s National Transportation Vetting Center (NTVC).

  Individuals who use the alternate forms of identification undergo extra screening, according to the letter.

  Additionally, TSA said it screens passengers through its Secure Flight program before they enter airport security and board a plane to check if they are on terrorist database and other watch lists.

  *  *  *

  According to the TSA, it relies on agencies such as CBP or ICE, which issues documents to migrants that are used as alternate ID to ensure that the migrant “is the person whom the person claims to be.”

  Per the letter, if a person cannot be identified via a database search, an airport’s Federal Security Director (FSD) can initiate further screening, or decide to deny the person entry.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/19/2022 – 21:45

• Americans For War: Is The Ukraine/Russia Conflict A US Foreign Policy Goal?
  Americans For War: Is The Ukraine/Russia Conflict A US Foreign Policy Goal?

  Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

  Dare I say a dangerous truth, but there are politicians and analysts and journalists who want Russia to invade Ukraine.

  

  Not because these folks are “Putin apologists,” to quote a popular insult they use against the anti-war crowd. But because they see Russian actions as a pretext for U.S. intervention and perpetual U.S. presence in Ukraine, if not elsewhere. (Poke the bear and you’re the antagonist. Get attacked by the bear and you’re the victim.)

  How can Russian aggression best be used? For some, it is the justification for more troops and more weapons in Eastern Europe. NATO sees the opportunity to “reinforce its troop presence in the Black Sea and the Baltics.”

  Here in the States, former Obama Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Evelyn Farkas advocates “U.S. leaders should be marshalling an international coalition of the willing, readying military forces to deter Putin and, if necessary, prepare for war.” Others argue for an aggressive military response or suggest the option of “U.S. boots on the ground.” Max Boot, a delusional journalist with a large platform, a silly fedora, and an appetite for war, promotes an urgent airlift of U.S. weapons systems to Ukraine. Boot goes so far as to issue a silly warning that Putin is attempting to resurrect the “evil empire.” If Boot believes these words, then he will eventually advocate the most extreme measures to counter Russia. Dangerous rhetoric indeed.

  If recent history is any indication, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy certainly sees the current crisis, if you can call it that, as an opportunity. Last June, he tweeted “NATO leaders confirmed that Ukraine” will become a member of the Alliance.” This announcement came days before Biden’s scheduled meeting with President Vladimir Putin. In other words, it was planned. And while Biden’s response last summer was ambivalent on Ukraine joining NATO, more recently he assured Zelenskiy that “Kyiv’s bid to join the NATO military alliance was in its own hands.” This comment came after Putin’s warning that Ukraine’s admission to NATO is a “red line” for Moscow.

  Maybe the questions should have been how this crisis, the conclusion of which is unknown, could have been prevented. According to professor Stephen Walt, if the West had not “succumbed to hubris” and kept the promise to not include Ukraine in NATO, “Russia would probably never have seized Crimea.” Maybe it was hubris. Or maybe the U.S. anticipated Russia’s response and saw it as an opportunity to increase American influence?

  On that question of influence, and as to Russian concerns about NATO, watch this essential explanation by the late Stephen Cohen:

  While those supporting NATO expansion argue it is a defensive alliance, how is Moscow to react if those defensive weapons – with devastating offensive capabilities – are at its border and can strike targets within Russia in a matter of minutes?

  Is there any question that the U.S. would not tolerate Russian missiles at its border?

  These are issues that nations are entitled to answer, no matter if they are democratic or otherwise. (By no means does this ever condone wrongful conduct.) But you can’t observe such things in current America, dare you be accused of moral equivalence – or worse. Tucker Carlson makes these arguments and is branded a traitor by the media. Democrat operatives (with Ukrainian interests) demand he be prosecuted for treason for the crime of questioning our leaders. Even at National Review, a “conservative” publication, we see disgusting charges that “many of America’s most famous ‘nationalists’ don’t seem to be bothered by imperialism, so long as the imperialists speak Russian.” The standard attacks against those who dare challenge U.S. foreign policy orthodoxy.

  Let us assume that Russia believes Ukraine will eventually join NATO, or at minimum assesses there is a likelihood it occurs. From the Russian point of view, their response – the seizure of Crimea, the current build-up of forces at the Russia-Ukraine border – is defensive in nature. (Not that it justifies conduct.) There is some irony that Russia is now applying neo-conservative principles of preemptive warfare. The further irony is that the neo-conservatives now decry such actions.

  Allegations of False Flags

  Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby alleges “Russia is already working actively to create a pretext for a potential invasion, for a move on Ukraine.” He claims they are planning “a false flag operation — an operation designed to look like an attack on … Russian speaking people in Ukraine, again, as an excuse to go in.”

  Maybe that’s true. Maybe it isn’t. The United States knows something about false flag operations, does it not?

  War hawks within the Trump Administration took advantage of a likely false flag operation in Syria to justify intervention. As reported by Aaron Mate, “A series of leaked documents from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) raise the possibility that the Trump administration bombed Syria on false grounds and pressured officials at the world’s top chemical weapons watchdog to cover it up.”

  And how are we to assess the Pentagon’s claims about Russia, considering its recent blunders and history of outright lies to Americans?

  The events of this past summer do not inspire confidence. General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified there was no intelligence suggesting the quick collapse of the Afghan government to the Taliban. Reporting from the New York Times disputed that testimony, citing classified intelligence assessments predicting a “Taliban takeover of Afghanistan” and warning of “the rapid collapse of the Afghan military.”

  Ask yourself who is telling the truth, and you end up making a decision on which liar is to be believed. I’m not sure which is worse – General Milley lying, or the American intelligence community making such a catastrophic mistake. It’s a choice between personal failure and institutional failure.

  Or consider the American drone strike killed 10 innocent civilians in Kabul. Deaths to be blamed on intelligence reliance on bad sources (which might have been the Taliban) and bad information resulted in no punishment.

  Undoubtedly, the worst of it was the thousands of American lives lost in the war in Afghanistan. Young men and women volunteered to fight what our officials promised was a just and necessary war, a war we were allegedly winning. In reality, these U.S. officials were “making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”

  To quote three-star Army General Douglas Lute:

  “If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction . . . 2,400 lives lost,” Lute added, blaming the deaths of U.S. military personnel on bureaucratic breakdowns among Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department. “Who will say this was in vain?”

  The consequences of the lies and incompetence are still felt today. As the Russia-Ukraine crisis heats up, we have no idea whether American leadership is telling the truth.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/19/2022 – 21:25

• Supermarkets Report Food Shortages After Canada Imposes Trucker Vax Mandate
  Supermarkets Report Food Shortages After Canada Imposes Trucker Vax Mandate

  Overwhelmed supply chains and truck driver shortages worsened when Canada imposed new border mandates prohibiting unvaccinated American truckers. With low vaccination rates among US drivers, Canadian supermarkets are already reporting rising food inflation and shortages of certain products, according to Bloomberg. 

  Canada’s vaccine mandate for truckers came into effect on Saturday. The new rule requires US truckers to be vaccinated to cross the border. We warned earlier this week such a mandate would have “consequences.” 

  

  The vaccine mandate has exacerbated the shortage of truck drivers and made wait times at border crossings even longer. Eighty percent of trade between the US and Canada is transited by truck. America exports about 90% of Canada’s fruits and vegetables during the winter season. As shipments decline because only about half of US truck drivers are vaccinated, grocery stores report shortages.

  “We’re seeing shortages,” said Gary Sands, senior vice president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers. “We’re hearing from members they’re going into some stores where there’s no oranges or bananas.'”

  The main concern is the mandate could create a domino effect and ripple through the already stressed supply chain. Logistical disruptions have been a significant source of soaring inflation. According to North American Produce Buyers, the cost of sending a truckload of fresh produce from Southern California to Canada is now $9,500, up from $7,000. That means companies are paying more for freight and will pass on costs to consumers. 

  Given the drop in eligible truckers, products bound for Canada will build in US warehouses with no place to go until new drivers are seen.

  The situation will only worsen on Jan. 22 when the US begins imposing its vaccine mandate on Canadian truckers. The Canadian Trucking Association warned the mandate would sideline up to 16,000 truckers. 

  Canadian truck drivers are furious with the US decision and have blocked the highway near the US-Manitoba international border to protest the new mandates. Videos posted on social media show the chaos playing out on the other side of the border. 

  Truckers Stage Protest Against Mandates At The U.S.-Canada Border at Emerson Manitoba pic.twitter.com/iBwZHHlTJC

  — BasedUK (@Based__UK) January 18, 2022

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  Here is another. pic.twitter.com/HEzKK0V8SF

  — Amy (@Amy41294821) January 18, 2022

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  Cross-border vaccine mandates will only make the supply chain more stressed to the point where it might break.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/19/2022 – 21:05

• Chinese Homebuilders Soar As Beijing Prompts Prisoner's Dilemma in Rescue Plan
  Chinese Homebuilders Soar As Beijing Prompts Prisoner’s Dilemma in Rescue Plan

  Just as we predicted last week, bonds and stocks of China’s beleaguered homebuilders surged Wednesday on reports that regulators are considering lifting restrictions on the companies’ access to cash from pre-sold properties tied up in escrow accounts. If implemented successfully, it could ease developers’ cash crunch.

  But, as Bloomberg Markets Live analyst Ye Xie writes, it won’t be all smooth sailing, and what needs to be addressed is the “prisoner’s dilemma” confronted by local governments. Those who were first to ease their grip on the local escrow accounts may face the risk that developers divert cash away and leave local projects unfinished. “Such concern may limit the incentives for local regulators to carry out the order from Beijing”, according to Xie.

  Bloomberg reported that releasing funds from the escrow accounts is part of a policy package regulators are contemplating to prevent the real-estate crisis from worsening. Reuters first reported the news, spurring a rally in struggling developers. Dollar bonds of Sunac China jumped 50% Wednesday.

  

  The discussion marks another step by Beijing toward stabilizing the housing market and keeping cash-strapped developers from failing. Meanwhile, as we noted yesterday, the PBOC’s dovish briefing Tuesday fueled speculation that mortgage rates could be lowered.

  As Xie explains, in China, when real-estate companies sell residential properties before construction is completed, they’re required to deposit the proceeds in supervised bank accounts. Proceeds from pre-sales generally make up more than half of developers’ cash inflows. Relaxation, therefore, opens up a channel for developers to raise funds, just when they have a mountain of bills and debt to pay in coming months.

  

  But Nomura’s economists Lu Ting, Jing Wang and Harrington Zhang are skeptical about how effective the new plan will be. The reason is simple: While the central government can provide the guidance, it’s the local governments that have the actual regulatory control over those escrow accounts. Developers’ financial challenges mean that local governments will be “quite cautious” about loosening their grip on the accounts.

  “We believe local governments do not have an incentive to be the first to ease their grip on their local escrow accounts,” wrote Lu in a note. “This is because developers in need of cash will move funds out of the first batch of eased escrow accounts, and those local government officials will have to take responsibility for failed construction projects in their regions as a result.”

  Last year, Lu attracted wide attention when he published a report drawing parallel between Beijing’s commitments to reining in the housing market and Paul Volcker’s epic but economically painful campaign to break the back of inflation in the U.S. in the 1970s. The report has so far been correct, and explained quite clearly why Beijing had no choice but to capitulate and ease to avoid an all out collapse of the housing sector.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/19/2022 – 20:45

• Djokovic Owns 80% Stake In Biotech Firm Working On COVID 'Cure'
  Djokovic Owns 80% Stake In Biotech Firm Working On COVID ‘Cure’

  Since being deported from Australia last week, men’s tennis champion Novak Djokovic has returned to Belgrade, where he lives with his family.

  Having inadvertently (or not) become the locus of the international debate about mandatory vaccinations, Reuters reported that Djokovic and his wife hold a combined 80% stake in Danish biotech firm QuantBioRes, which is working on developing a cure for SARS-CoV-2.

  

  QuantBioRes boss Ivan Loncarevic has described himself as an entrepreneur, he reportedly said the tennis player’s acquisition of the 80% stake was made in June 2020, but declined to say how much Djokovic shelled out for his stake.

  The firm said the company had about a dozen researchers working in Denmark, Australia and Slovenia. According to the Danish company register, Djokovic and his wife Jelena own 40.8% and 39.2% of QuantBioRes, respectively.

  Copenhagen-based QuantBioRes is aiming to develop a ‘peptide’ treatment against Covid-19 which would inhibit the virus from infecting human cells. Later this year, the company expects to launch clinical trials in the UK; it has around a dozen researchers working in Denmark, Australia, and Slovenia, Loncarevic explained.

  Djokovic has enjoyed phenomenal success – Forbes listed Djoko as one of the world’s top-50 highest paid athletes for 2021, tabulating his on-court earnings at $4.5MM. That number was dwarfed by the $30MM he supposedly earned off the court. His total career earnings are believed to be around €150MM ($170MM).

  Loncarevic stressed that the peptide treatment is a therapeutic designed to treat COVID; it’s not a vaccine.

  But as Djokovic moves deeper into his 30s, his quest to finally cement his position as the world’s greatest (male) tennis player – breaking his tie with Swiss legend Roger Federer – is running out of time.

  Djoko was hoping to play in the Australian Open and win, which would have netted him his 21st grand slam title, breaking his tie with Federer for most “grand slam” titles” won by a single (male) player.

  Looking beyond February, Djoko’s most immediate concern is the next grand slam tournament – the French Open in May.

  Unfortunately, the French sports ministry has already declared that there will be no exemptions to France’s new vaccine law.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/19/2022 – 20:25

• Jordan Peterson: Why I Am No Longer A Tenured Professor At The University Of Toronto
  Jordan Peterson: Why I Am No Longer A Tenured Professor At The University Of Toronto

  I recently resigned from my position as full tenured professor at the University of Toronto. I am now professor emeritus, and before I turned sixty. Emeritus is generally a designation reserved for superannuated faculty, albeit those who had served their term with some distinction. I had envisioned teaching and researching at the U of T, full time, until they had to haul my skeleton out of my office. I loved my job. And my students, undergraduates and graduates alike, were positively predisposed toward me. But that career path was not meant to be. There were many reasons, including the fact that I can now teach many more people and with less interference online. But here’s a few more:

  First, my qualified and supremely trained heterosexual white male graduate students (and I’ve had many others, by the way) face a negligible chance of being offered university research positions, despite stellar scientific dossiers. This is partly because of Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity mandates (my preferred acronym: DIE).

  

  These have been imposed universally in academia, despite the fact that university hiring committees had already done everything reasonable for all the years of my career, and then some, to ensure that no qualified “minority” candidates were ever overlooked. My students are also partly unacceptable precisely because they are my students. I am academic persona non grata, because of my unacceptable philosophical positions [emphasis by ZH]. And this isn’t just some inconvenience. These facts rendered my job morally untenable. How can I accept prospective researchers and train them in good conscience knowing their employment prospects to be minimal?

  Second reason: This is one of many issues of appalling ideology currently demolishing the universities and, downstream, the general culture. Not least because there simply is not enough qualified BIPOC people in the pipeline to meet diversity targets quickly enough (BIPOC: black, indigenous and people of colour, for those of you not in the knowing woke). This has been common knowledge among any remotely truthful academic who has served on a hiring committee for the last three decades.

  This means we’re out to produce a generation of researchers utterly unqualified for the job. And we’ve seen what that means already in the horrible grievance studies “disciplines.” That, combined with the death of objective testing, has compromised the universities so badly that it can hardly be overstated. And what happens in the universities eventually colours everything. As we have discovered.

  All my craven colleagues must craft DIE statements to obtain a research grant. They all lie (excepting the minority of true believers) and they teach their students to do the same. And they do it constantly, with various rationalizations and justifications, further corrupting what is already a stunningly corrupt enterprise. Some of my colleagues even allow themselves to undergo so-called anti-bias training, conducted by supremely unqualified Human Resources personnel, lecturing inanely and blithely and in an accusatory manner about theoretically all-pervasive racist/sexist/heterosexist attitudes. Such training is now often a precondition to occupy a faculty position on a hiring committee.

  Need I point out that implicit attitudes cannot — by the definitions generated by those who have made them a central point of our culture — be transformed by short-term explicit training? Assuming that those biases exist in the manner claimed, and that is a very weak claim, and I’m speaking scientifically here. The Implicit Association test — the much-vaunted IAT, which purports to objectively diagnose implicit bias (that’s automatic racism and the like) is by no means powerful enough — valid and reliable enough — to do what it purports to do.

  Two of the original designers of that test, Anthony Greenwald and Brian Nosek, have said as much, publicly. The third, Professor Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard, remains recalcitrant. Much of this can be attributed to her overtly leftist political agenda, as well as to her embeddedness within a sub-discipline of psychology, social psychology, so corrupt that it denied the existence of left-wing authoritarianism for six decades after World War II. The same social psychologists, broadly speaking, also casually regard conservatism (in the guise of “system justification”) as a form of psychopathology.

  Read the rest of Jordan Peterson’s op-ed at National Post…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/19/2022 – 20:05

• Here Are The Highlights From Biden's "Longer-Than-Expected" Press Conference
  Here Are The Highlights From Biden’s “Longer-Than-Expected” Press Conference

  Update (1800EET): In what seemed like an attempt to make up for the fact that this was only the second solo presser of his presidency, America’s geriatric Democrat-in-chief stretched his Q&A out for nearly two hours. In that time, he blamed a gallery of villains for the woes plaguing contemporary American society. They included: the virus (but – and this is important  – not the Communist-controlled one-party state that unleashed it), meat processors (for driving up prices on meat), Vladimir Putin and, of course, his predecessor, President Trump (but not Dr. Fauci, who helped finance the gain-of-function research that may have helped Chinese scientists create SARS-CoV-2).

  First of all, Biden admitted that he suspects Russia will attempt to invade Ukraine. But if they do, Biden promised that the economic costs will be extremely “heavy”. He has “never seen sanctions like the ones I’ve promised will be imposed” Biden said, referring to his rival, President Vladimir Putin.

  On the geopolitical front, Biden also said that the US isn’t yet ready to remove President Trump’s tariffs on China. Does he have a timeline for possible removal? “The answer is uncertain,” Biden said. His top trade official is working on it.

  And as oil prices continue their climb, Biden said he is doing everything he can to increase available supplies (everything except another release from the US SPR).

  Later, he said that it’s not too late for talks with Iran to yield another deal. “There is some progress being made,” but “it remains to be seen” if Tehran will make a deal, Biden said in a news conference Wednesday marking his first year in office.

  He also confirmed that VP Kamala Harris will be his running mate in 2024.

  Early in his opening statement, Biden said he wouldn’t simply accept the status quo as a “new normal”.

  “I’m not going to give up and accept things as they are now…some people call it a new normal. I call it a job not yet finished,” Biden said.

  He also acknowledged that it’s become “clear” to him that Democrats in Congress will need to break up the president’s tax and spending plans.

  While he claims to support the Fed’s political independence, Biden said that it’s probably appropriate for the central bank to “recalibrate” policy so as to effectively combat inflation. He also said his nominees to serve in senior roles at the central bank (including re-nominating Powell to serve as its chairman for another term) should be approved by the Senate right away.

  The No. 1 takeaway from the MSM is that Biden’s press conference was “longer than expected”. Many of his supporters celebrated this as evidence that the president can still ‘turn it on’ when he needs to.

  On length of Biden’s press conference: you cannot answer the question “are you competent?” you can only demonstrate it. That is what Biden did today, and did it in a slam dunk. Anyone who has ever dealt with a hostile reporter, it is a task, draining, takes mental acuity.

  — David Doak (@SouthPoint1000) January 19, 2022

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  Others gleefully mocked them for grasping for a positive.

  A hilarious number of people on here attempting to prop up Joe Biden’s press conference by complementing its length.

  “It may have been rambling and incoherent at times but boy was it long”

  — Kevin Dalton (@NextLAMayor) January 20, 2022

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  Now, we imagine Biden is rewarding himself with a glass of warm milk and a nap.

  * * *

  President Joe Biden is about to cap his first full 12 months in office by holding what has been described by the NY Post as only the second solo press briefing since the former VP returned to the White House.

  Readers can watch live below. The briefing is slated to begin at 1600ET:

  Biden is expected to discuss COVID, his dismal approval rating and a range of other topics.

  

  Biden has largely remained out of public view this week – stopping briefly to speak with reporters outside of the White House on Monday.

  On Tuesday, members of the White House attended an economic briefing and also called Finland’s President Sauli Niinistö to discuss tensions between Ukraine and Russia.

  Will Biden’s handling of the pandemic elicit tough questions from the press now that the omicron variant has sent cases and hospitalization rates to all-time highs this month? We think you probably know the answer…

  More than 855K US residents tested positive for COVID Monday, according to CDC data, nearly 3x last winter’s peak of just 294K cases on Jan. 8, 2021. And about 150K US hospital patients have COVID, besting the pre-omicron record of 133K “variant” cases recorded last January.

  To put this all in context: 352K Americans died of (or from) COVID in 2020 under Trump, while 474,000 Americans died of/from COVID in 2021 under Biden.

  Murderer! Right, Salon?

  

  Now, President Biden is running around trying to “take credit” for the dynamic drop in COVID cases.

  The impression that Biden has been asleep at the wheel has helped to drive Biden’s job approval rating lower; one recent Quinnipiac Poll tagged Biden’s approval rating at just 33%.

  President Biden’s overall approval rating in the last seven Quinnipiac polls: 49%, 46%, 42%, 38%, 37%, 36%, 33%.

  — Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) January 12, 2022

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  If QPac’s numbers are that low, imagine what the “real” numbers might look like.

  If even the left-wing pollsters have numbers this bad for Biden, the real numbers must be even more horrific. https://t.co/LiV8S7f7O4

  — Mollie (@MZHemingway) January 12, 2022

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  Either way, Biden is cratering.

  

  The President only agreed to participate in Wednesday’s briefing after his top media advisors desperately implored him to get out there and speak directly to the American people.

  As Matt Taibbi writes via TK News:

  Joe Biden’s Awesome First Year

  To win an exhausted nation’s admiration, all Joe Biden had to do was nothing. Instead, he’s burning future votes like kindling…

  

  The Gallup agency released a picture of the comet that is the Joe Biden presidency on its first anniversary. This is what a one-year, 14-point party affiliation swing looks like:

  

  The pollsters put the numbers in context:

  Both the nine-point Democratic advantage in the first quarter and the five-point Republican edge in the fourth quarter are among the largest Gallup has measured for each party in any quarter since it began regularly measuring party identification and leaning in 1991.

  How great was life for Joe Biden a year ago? MSNBC’s John Heilemann compared him to Lincoln; PBS White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor said the return of the Democrats “felt like we are being rescued from the craziness and now here are the superheroes to come and save us all”; Rachel Maddow went through “half a box of Kleenex” in joy; even Chris Wallace on Fox said Biden’s half-coherent inauguration speech was “the best inaugural address I ever heard,” JFK’s iconic “Ask Not” included.

  Biden looks bad. During the campaign, when he was challenging strangers to pushup contests and doing sternum-pokes in crowds while nervous aides bit their lips, you could make the argument he was merely in steep with his mental decline, which was okay. Against Trump the standard of “technically alive” worked for a lot of voters. Biden now looks like a man deep into the peeing-on-houseplants stage, and every appearance is an adventure.

  He might say, “Even Dr. King’s assassination did not have the worldwide impact that George Floyd’s death did,” or repeat his evolving fantasy about getting arrested with Nelson Mandela (who according to the president also later came to Washington to say, “You got arrested trying to see me!”), or let it slip that aides are shielding him from all news (a logical takeaway from his “Let’s Go Brandon, I agree” Christmas moment). Or, he might just collapse into syllable-piles before casting around in fright, like this gut-wrenching “Where’s Tim?” scene:

  It’s reached the point where MSNBC is permitting guests like Donny Deutsch to say things like, “He seems old.” In a panic, Party spokestool Paul Begala went on the network this week to deliver a real-life version of the old Mel Brooks “the peasants are revolting” joke, saying “the problem for the Democrats… is not that they have bad leaders. They have bad followers.”

  As Paul Begala said, “the problem with the Democrats…FF

  Biden has always been an easy punchline. A tumescent yeller with hair plugs is a magnet for comics.

  TK News subscribers can continue reading here.

  FInally, here are some questions that Biden might face during Wednesday’s briefing, courtesy of the Hill:

  1. Is Build Back Better dead? Are you willing to urge Democrats to pass pieces of it rather than the whole proposal?
  2. You have warned for several months that Republican laws like the one in Georgia represent an attack on democracy. Why then did you wait until last week to make a forceful push to alter the filibuster? And would you support reforming the Electoral Count Act if other efforts fail?
  3. What preventative measures is your administration looking at in order to prevent another test shortage and other pandemic-related measures should another variant arise? What do you say to criticism that your administration is reacting instead of being more proactive two years into the pandemic?
  4. Have you been satisfied with the messaging coming from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention? Can your administration improve the way it communicates about the pandemic to the American public?
  5. You and your advisers have predicted that inflation will be transitory, but with the costs of food, housing and other essential goods rising, how can you assure Americans that your administration is focused on addressing surging inflation?
  6. Last week, the Supreme Court struck down your sweeping vaccine-or-test mandate for large private businesses. Will that be the end of your efforts to mandate vaccines or are more actions on the table?
  7. You recently called the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol an “insurrection” and an attempted “coup.” Do you believe the Justice Department should prosecute former President Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot?
  8. Can you commit unequivocally to running for reelection? Will Vice President Harris be your running mate? If you can’t commit unequivocally, who do you think should be the nominee if circumstances ultimately cause you to decide against running?
  9. Your press secretary, Jen Psaki, said Tuesday that Russia could launch an attack on Ukraine “at any point.” What is your administration going to do to punish Russia if it does so? Are you doing everything you can to try to force Russia to pull troops back from the border with Ukraine?

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/19/2022 – 20:01

• Latest Tucker Carlson Ukraine Segment Sent Liberal Media & Political Elites Into Meltdown
  Latest Tucker Carlson Ukraine Segment Sent Liberal Media & Political Elites Into Meltdown

  Author and political commentator Michael Brendan Dougherty writes, “Defining Ukraine’s sovereignty and integrity as a core security interest of the United States, akin to possession of Massachusetts, is a form of insanity.” As a case in point, Clint Ehrlich has spent a significant amount of time in Russia and the broader region as a geopolitical researcher, making him somewhat a serious expert on the crisis. But his appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight is now causing a collective meltdown among establishment pundits not seen since the height of the Russiagate hysteria in recent years. 

  Days ago Ehrlich wrote that “The world is perched on the edge of an abyss. We may soon see the worst combat in Europe since WW2 – killing thousands of people, and raising the likelihood of nuclear war. It didn’t have to be this way.” And on Wednesday he had this to say: “My segment last night on Tucker Carlson is having a bigger impact than I ever imagined. It’s causing pro-war pundits and politicians to lose their minds! Let’s catalog their meltdowns…

  * * *

  Clint Ehrlich chronicles the avalanche of ‘hate mail’ he’s received in less than 24 hours since his above segment with Fox’s Tucker Carlson…

  I don’t know who is this guy but he is indeed triggering all the right persons https://t.co/fDnGpAcFY8

  — Abd el-Kader (@PrincAbdElKader) January 19, 2022

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  First, the man, the myth, the moron, Bill Kristol:

  

  ESPN anchor turned paranoid xenophobe, Keith Olbermann, says we’re traitors

  

  Four bad takes doesn’t make one good one, David French.

  

  Rick Wilson writes… this. He thinks “comrade” jokes are clever burns in 2022.

  

  Obama’s favorite speechwriter says we’re on the side of an “entho-nationalist authoritarian.”

  The first part of that claim shows he has zero idea about Russian domestic politics, btw. Clownworld insult.

  
  This famous #RussiaGate believer thinks the segment makes Fox News a “hostile foreign propaganda outlet.”

  

  The founder of the DailyKos now cheers on war with Russia from the Left!

  

  A sitting Congressman calls Tucker and I “right-wing agitators spewing Russian propaganda.”

  

  CNN’s chief White House correspondent says the segment was orchestrated by Russian intelligence

  

  Congressman who was seduced by a Chinese spy, now vocal about dangers of foreign influence!

  

  Will anyone have the courage to call you out for being a twit, Joe Walsh?

  

  This #resistance “fact checker” somehow ties my segment to …. January 6? How? Why?

  Not relevant, since these aren’t serious claims, just casual insults.

  

  This lawyer with a big following wants Tucker to be prosecuted as an unregistered foreign agent!

  

  Academic specializing in propaganda… hallucinates seeing propaganda. Shocking.

  

  Film critic wants Tucker arrested for being an agent of a hostile foreign power. You can’t make this stuff up.

  

  Jonah Goldberg claims Ukraine would not be under U.S. military control if it joined NATO.

  Apparently has no idea how NATO’s command structure works.

  
  DailyBeast columnist says my segment will be “all over Russian TV.”

  This is… actually true. But Russian TV shows American stories about Russia whether the takes are positive or negative.

  

  Being #NeverTrump now means anyone you disagree with is in league with Putin

  

  Hhmmmmm

  

  Ex-GOPer thinks being against war with Russia means we want to make America like Russia.

  Totally logical conclusion…!

  

  Natsec lawyer claims the segment “dusted off Soviet talking points.”

  

  CNN contributor doesn’t have a good enough burn about Putin, so she throws in vaccines.

  

  “Ebola expert” offers her takes on foreign policy. Results make you question her medical judgment.

  

  Reminder: The people who want to censor Tucker and me are the ones trying to make America MORE like Soviet Russia.

  

  More “comrade” jokes from these people. The 1980s called, they want their humor back.

  

  I’m sure this joke sounded better in your head.

  

  Because it sure seems like everyone in this thread is on the same page…

  Who’s controlling your teleprompter?

  

  Wow, I missed the craziest part of this tweet:

  Wow, I missed the craziest part of this tweet:

  She says our segment was “hybrid war,” so she wants Tucker prosecuted for *treason.*

  He would face the DEATH PENALTY. https://t.co/H7VWDfxKeA

  — Clint Ehrlich (@ClintEhrlich) January 19, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  She says our segment was “hybrid war,” so she wants Tucker prosecuted for *treason.*

  He would face the DEATH PENALTY.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/19/2022 – 19:45

• 5G Network Deployment In The US Spawns Cluster Of Disruption
  5G Network Deployment In The US Spawns Cluster Of Disruption

  Authored by Jon Ostrower via theaircurrent.com (emphasis ours),

  Something is going on with Runway 10L at Palm Beach International Airport in Florida. Last week, a Bombardier-built CRJ200 regional jet on final approach had the strangest thing happen.

  

  The aircraft’s radar altitude abruptly ran down to zero, causing repeated loud aural warnings: PULL UP WHOOP WHOOP DON’T SINK TOO LOW GEAR. The flight landed without incident in good weather, but it wasn’t the first time. “Exact same location multiple times the past two weeks,” the pilot, who was on the flight deck for both anomalies, told The Air Current.

  The incidents were reported to the Federal Aviation Administration. It’s not known definitively if the radar altimeter behavior was related to pre-deployment testing of 5G telecommunication technologies, but the unexplained incident underscored the fears of aviators, as well as the confusion and increasing disruption that is now befalling U.S. commercial aviation.

  Subscribe to TAC

  International airlines like Emirates, Air India, Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways have cancelled flights to select cities, citing the 5G C Band interference risk to their aircraft. Boeing on Monday night sent a so-called multi-operator message to carriers flying 777 and 747-8s and “recommends operators do not operate 777 airplanes on approach and landing to U.S. runways” with 5G C Band notices starting on January 19 unless there is an alternative means of compliance with FAA directives, according to guidance reviewed by The Air Current.

  “The above recommendation has been determined through the Boeing Safety Review Board and engineering pilot evaluation based on the uncertainty of the 5G operating environment,” the company wrote. The review board meeting was held on January 15. “Boeing recommends that operators develop contingency plans for their operations.”

  Boeing referred comment to the FAA after saying, like Airbus, it was working with an industry coalition to address the 5G deployment issue with U.S. regulators. The FAA did not respond to questions about the reported incident in Palm Beach.

  Scaling back activation

  The U.S. 5G network will be formally activated by Verizon and AT&T on January 19 in 32 states, but both companies plan to limit the deployment around major U.S. airports. “We have voluntarily decided to limit our 5G network around airports,” Verizon said in a statement Tuesday. AT&T said the same. “At our sole discretion we have voluntarily agreed to temporarily defer turning on a limited number of towers around certain airport runways as we continue to work with the aviation industry about our 5G deployment.”

  President Joe Biden in a statement thanked both companies for delaying their implementation at a “limited set of locations” to avoid any disruption around “key airports”, but that localized stand down came after Boeing’s Monday-evening recommendation causing international carriers to cancel flights to certain U.S. destinations.

  

  “We recognize the economic importance of expanding 5G, and we appreciate the wireless companies working with us to protect the flying public and the country’s supply chain. The complex U.S. airspace leads the world in safety because of our high standards for aviation, and we will maintain this commitment as wireless companies deploy 5G,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in a statement.

  Yet, the disruption is expected to continue even with the Verizon and AT&T move, according to industry officials. The airworthiness directive issued by the FAA on December 7 warning of disruption from 5G signals to radio altimeters is the guidance operators fly with, not a voluntary shift by telecom companies. “FAA limits define what can or cannot be done,” said one industry official.

  Now, the FAA is scrambling to add precision to its blanket directive from December, clearing each aircraft, its specific make and model of radio altimeter, and each airport and its surrounding 5G networks for safe operation.

  The FAA on Monday said it had cleared operations with two radio altimeter models found on Boeing 737, 747, 757, 767, MD-10/-11 and Airbus A310, A319, A320, A321, A330 and A350 models. Those cleared aircraft account for about 45% of the U.S. airline fleet.

  Notably missing from the FAA’s list are the 777 and 787, the backbone of the international fleet. The CEOs of the country’s largest airlines through Airlines4America, its chief lobbying group, wrote to the White House, FAA, DOT and Federal Communications Commission that “airplane manufacturers have informed us that there are huge swaths of the operating fleet that may need to be indefinitely grounded. In addition to the chaos caused domestically, this lack of usable wide body aircraft could potentially strand tens of thousands of Americans overseas.”

  Last month, both Boeing and Airbus urged telecom networks to delay the 5G implementation, while they evaluate any potential impact on radio altimeters that are integral to not only establishing a reliable height off the ground, but are part of the flight control and propulsion logic on aircraft like the 787 that are needed on every flight, regardless of weather conditions and visibility.

  The chaotic deployment is a black eye for the U.S. aviation regulator at a time when its focus since 2019 has been on the grounding of Boeing’s 737 Max and coordinating the jet’s return to service.

  This didn’t creep up on the aerospace industry nor Congress, whose documented concerns to the FCC about interference date back to 2018 and repeated published warnings. The Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA) issued an October 2020 report saying that the 5G frequencies operating “in the [2,700 to 3,900 Mhz] band will cause harmful interference to radar altimeters on all types of civil aircraft” and revealed a “major risk” to safe aviation operations.

  Radio altimeters on aircraft operate in the nearby 4,200- to 4,400-MHz frequency band, but regulators around the world have recommended a “guard band” around aviation operations to prevent any interference.

  The telecom companies, which purchased the rights to the spectrum for $81 billion without restrictions in February 2021, were sharply critical of the U.S. aviation regulator and industry. “They have not utilized the last two years they’ve had to responsibly plan for this deployment,” said AT&T in its Tuesday statement. 

  Both companies have pointed to the successful deployment of 5G networks in 40 countries, however, they have not been enacted without restrictions around airports. In October, Canada’s government told its telecom companies to offer a 550 to 700 MHz buffer for deployment of 5G networks around its largest airports, surprising the providers who spent $9 billion in July procuring the spectrum band for the next generation network, according to an October report in the Toronto Star.

  The FAA noted on its 5G guide that other countries, such as France, have implemented larger airport buffer zones and antennas are deliberately tilted downward to limit harmful interference with aircraft, in addition to lower 5G power levels.

  Elan Head and Howard Slutsken also contributed to this report.

  Write to Jon Ostrower at jon@theaircurrent.com

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/19/2022 – 19:25

• Florida's Citrus Crop To Be Smallest Since WW2, Squeezes OJ Prices Higher
  Florida’s Citrus Crop To Be Smallest Since WW2, Squeezes OJ Prices Higher

  The first meal of the day may soon become more expensive for consumers as food inflation soars.

  A combination of citrus disease and adverse weather conditions have plagued Florida’s orange crop and may soon constrain supplies, which has already forced orange juice prices to multi-year highs as demand remains robust. 

  “You have your classical supply-demand mismatch,” Shawn Hackett, president of Hackett Financial Advisors, which specializes in agricultural commodities analysis, told CNN Bussiness. Due to dwindling supply, “much higher prices are coming to supermarkets,” he warned. 

  

  Last week, the US Agriculture Department issued a report about the state of Florida’s orange crop, revealing the Sunshine State will harvest only 44.5 million boxes of oranges this year, the smallest harvest since the 1944-45 season.

  “The Florida citrus crop is going to be one of the smallest crops since the 1940s,” said Judith Ganes, president of J Ganes Consulting, which offers commodities analysis to the food and agriculture industry.

  “It’s going to be even smaller than the production that occurred several years ago … when Hurricane Irma blew through Florida,” Ganes said.

  In what appears to be a citrus shortage developing, frozen orange juice futures have been squeezed higher, up more than 50% since the start of the virus pandemic. Prices are around $1.55 per pound as speculators could send prices to as high as $2. 

  

  Besides oranges, prices of other agricultural commodities have risen over the last year as supply-chain disruptions and or bad weather has kept inventory low. 

  

  Breakfast is becoming more expensive. Consumers are paying some of the highest prices for food in a decade as their real wages are wiped out by inflation. None of this has helped President Biden ahead of the midterms as his polling numbers drop to new lows. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/19/2022 – 19:05

• Biden: "My Guess" Is Russia Will Invade Ukraine: "I Don't Know If Putin Decided What He Wants To Do"
  Biden: “My Guess” Is Russia Will Invade Ukraine: “I Don’t Know If Putin Decided What He Wants To Do”

  President Joe Biden’s Wednesday afternoon “solo” press conference spent a lot of time on the Russia-Ukraine crisis. While he consistently echoed prior assessments given via White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki (that an invasion could come “at any point”), the most interesting new statements from the president gave a bit more detail as to what he’s willing to do or not willing to do regarding “consequences”.

  The big question that remains is: given any “incursion” or “offensive” by Russia into Eastern Ukraine, will Biden order a military response in support of Kiev, or will the US stop short by merely ramping up sanctions? Biden began early in the Q&A with journalists by underscoring his belief that Putin is planning to invade Ukraine: “my guess is he will move in,” he stated.

  As Axios underscores, Biden then followed it with statements suggesting the White House really is still at the stage of ‘guess work’: “But as Biden himself acknowledged, it’s unclear whether Putin himself has decided what comes next.” He also made a distinction between a “minor incursion” and full-on “invasion” – reportedly angering Ukrainian officials.

  

  “I believe he’s calculating what the immediate short-term and the near-term and the long-term consequences of Russia will be. And I don’t think he’s made up his mind yet,” Biden stressed. He admitted that “I don’t know if Putin decided what he wants to do” – in a bit of a glaring contradiction to all the breathless admin official statements of the last two weeks asserting an “invasion” is coming. Hilariously, there was also this contradiction during the presser:

  Biden: Decision to invade Ukraine “will depend on what side of bed Putin get’s up on…”

  Biden later: “he’s calculating Russia’s interests”

  And here’s CNN detailing his words on an “incursion” vs. major invasion:

  But he suggested a “minor incursion” would elicit a lesser response than a full-scale invasion of the country.

  “I’m not so sure he is certain what he is going to do. My guess is he will move in. He has to do something,” Biden said, describing a leader searching for relevance in a post-Soviet world. “He is trying to find his place in the world between China and the west.”

  Biden’s prediction of an invasion is the firmest acknowledgment to date the United States fully expects Putin to move after amassing 100,000 troops along the Ukraine border.

  NOW – Biden on Russia invading Ukraine: “It depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion…”pic.twitter.com/vnkySSSX9f

  — Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) January 19, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  That’s when Biden went through different US responses on the table…

  “He’s never seen sanctions like the ones I promised will be imposed if he moves, number one,” the president said. “It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and we end up having to fight about what to do and not do, et cetera.”

  “But if they actually do what they’re capable of doing with the forces amassed on the border, it is going to be a disaster for Russia if they further invade Ukraine. And that our allies and partners are ready to impose severe cost and significant harm on Russia and the Russian economy,” he added. This might include barring Russia from “anything that involves dollar denominations”; and notably in recent months the West has threatened to cut Russia off from SWIFT.

  Re: Biden in press conference suggesting a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine would be met with a lesser response, CNN’s Matthew Chance (who’s in Kyiv) just reported that Ukrainian officials “watched those remarks with horror”

  — Steve Lookner (@lookner) January 19, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  More of the president discussing different levels of a potential incursion…

  “If there is something that is where there’s Russian forces crossing the border, killing Ukrainian fighters, et cetera, I think that changes everything,” the President said. “But it depends on what he does, to what extent we’ll get total unity on the NATO front.”

  “It’s very important that we keep everyone in NATO on the same page. That’s what I’m spending a lot of time doing, and there are differences. There are differences in NATO as to what countries are willing to do, depending on what happens,” he added.

  Crucially, and perhaps somewhat disappointing for warmongers in mainstream media, Biden described that it’s more likely that any Putin-ordered action will be very limited in scope: 

  “The cost of going into Ukraine in terms of physical loss of life for the Russians — they’ll be able to prevail over time but it’s going to be heavy,” he said. “It’s going to be real. It’s going to be consequential. Putin has a stark choice. Either de-escalation or diplomacy. Confrontation and consequences.”

  “This is not all just a cake walk for Russia,” he went on. “Militarily, they have overwhelming superiority. And as it relates to Ukraine, they’ll pay a stiff price immediately, near term, medium term and long term if they do it.”

  Biden speculated Putin was not seeking “any full-blown war,” but said he did believe he was looking for some type of confrontation.

  “Do I think he’ll test the west? Test the United States and NATO as significantly as he can? Yes, I think he will. But I think he’ll pay a serious and dear price for it.”

  “He doesn’t think now will cost him what it’s going to cost him,” he said. “And I think he’ll regret having done it.”

  “The only thing I am confident of is that decision is totally, solely, completely Putin’s decision. Nobody else is going to make that decision. No one else is going to impact that decision. He’s making that decision. And I suspect it matters which side of the bed he gets up on in the morning as to exactly what he’s going to do,” Biden added.

  Putin is “calculating” – the president claimed: “I believe he’s calculating what the immediate short-term and the near-term and the long-term consequences of Russia will be. And I don’t think he’s made up his mind yet,” he said.

  UPDATE: #Ukraine – Russia

  • Ukraine: Russia’s build-up “almost complete”, 127,000 troops
  • Blinken meets Zelensky
  • UK sent anti-tank weapons
  • Canada sending special forces
  • GER could halt NordStream
  • Putin rejected Israeli mediation
  • Sherman 📞 #India’s FM Shringla

  — Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) January 19, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The Ukrainian government reaction to Biden’s words at such a tense moment wherein Kiev believes some 120,000 Russian troops are stationed near the border is said to be one of “shock” and disappointment, per CNN further: 

  A Ukrainian official told CNN’s Matthew Chance that he is “shocked that the US President Biden would distinguish between incursion and invasion” and suggest that a minor incursion would not trigger sanctions but an invasion would.

  “This gives the green light to Putin to enter Ukraine at his pleasure,” the official added.

  The Ukrainian official said he’d never heard any nuance like this from the US administration before.

  “Kyiv is stunned,” he added, referring to the Ukrainian government.

  Biden hinted at disunity within NATO, which is something that hawks and pundits have feared… that Putin aims precisely to use the troop build-up to drive a wedge between the Western allies. 

  Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself has admitted much of the extreme war rhetoric is “big hype”. He said this to his own citizens…

  “The risks have not just existed for a day, and they have not become bigger. The only thing that has become bigger is the hype around them,” Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy says regarding threat of Russia invadinghttps://t.co/jGePxEpSPA

  — DAILY SABAH (@DailySabah) January 19, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Indeed, hopefully cooler heads prevail and can see through the jingoism and hype, perhaps giving diplomacy a chance based on the question of NATO expansion and mutually hammering out the key issue of missile placement in Europe.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/19/2022 – 18:45

• Supreme Court Rejects Trump Request To Block Release Of Jan 6 Records
  Supreme Court Rejects Trump Request To Block Release Of Jan 6 Records

  With only Justice Clarence Thomas publicly dissenting, the US Supreme Court ruled against former President Trump, rejecting the former president’s claims of executive privilege and refused to stop the National Archives from turning over four tranches of Trump presidential records to the January 6 Committee

  The National Archives can now turn over about 800 pages of material, including visitor and call logs, emails, draft speeches and handwritten notes.

  The order gives a major legal and political victory to the House select committee and its Democratic chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, as Democrat seek to make a Trump run in 2024 impossible.

  Trump was seeking to override President Joe Biden’s decision to waive executive privilege over the documents. A federal appeals court said Biden’s stance and Congress’s need for the documents combined to outweigh Trump’s claims.

  In his pleading, Trump said SCOTUS needed to clarify the rights of ex-presidents to invoke executive privilege, but SCOTUS declined to do so, saying the lower court made clear that Trump’s EP claim would have failed “even if he were still president.”

  The full ruling is below (pdf link).

  21a272_9p6b by Zerohedge on Scribd

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/19/2022 – 18:24

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Even Without War, Russia Has Defeated Europe Already
  Even Without War, Russia Has Defeated Europe Already

  By Jonathan Holslag of EU Observer

  Whether or not Vladimir Putin moves his troops into Ukraine, he has once again confronted Europe with a most painful reality: while being too weak to defend itself, it can no longer rely on the United States to come to its rescue.

  

  We are facing a reality in which Russia, despite its economy only having the size of Italy’s, can bully and intimidate a continent thanks to its energy reserves and its readiness to project vast military power.

  Sure, any Russian invasion of Ukraine would cost Russia a fortune and likely degrade into a grinding war of attrition. Invasion is unlikely to be president Putin’s preferred option. Yet, this game of brinkmanship has another part of the equation. If Russia invades Ukraine, the costs for Europe will be equally devastating.

  It will force gas-addicted European countries to find expensive alternatives and to severe billions in infrastructure, from pipelines, over pumping stations, to dedicated storages.

  Russia also remains a key export destination and a supplier of other resources than oil and gas. Think of titanium. While the Kremlin has long prepared a gradual decoupling from Europe, the opposite remains unthinkable for most Europeans.

  While a sizeable part of the Russian population would support an intervention in the eastern part of Ukraine, citizens in many European countries will find it hard to accept soldiers to die for what they consider a strange, peripheral country: Ukraine.

  Countless times, I have heard very senior European business leaders sympathize with the leadership of Putin, to the point that one got the impression that they were more attracted to Russian strong leadership than Western liberalism.

  Cannon fodder

  Let’s also be fair. If, at this stage, European countries would have to stand up to a large Russian land invasion, many soldiers would end up as cannon fodder.

  Western European land forces have decayed into a bulky peace corps, their wheeled armoured vehicles hardly suitable for combat in the muddy battlefields in eastern Europe, their fire power no match for Russia’s, and their command and communication infrastructure highly-vulnerable to Russia’s immense electronic war-fighting capabilities.

  Chasing poorly-equipped terrorists is one thing; facing a formidable conventional army, ready for sacrifice yet another.

  Many European land forces struggle with a predator complex from the ‘Global War on Terror’. They are used to being superior, at least in terms of technology and fire-power, and have huge difficulties imagining that the hunter of the last decade might become the hunted in a large-scale conflict.

  The whole strategic mindset in that regard has become skewed towards defense; tactics towards limited surgical offense, often even from a distance.

  Stand-off, it is called. Land powers like Russia have also trained in precision and long-range strikes, yet always combined with blunt power: wearing volleys of missiles and artillery and big division-size units moving in.

  Sacrifice and attrition

  If everything in Europe is about efficiency; armed forces like Russia still factor in sacrifice, redundancy, and attrition. Clean wars do not exist in the Russian strategic lexicon.

  Europe has a lack of everything. Even if it tries to steer clear of frontline involvement, supporting from behind will not be much in evidence either. Many countries lack stand-off missiles or their ammunition stockpiles are dangerously low. Advanced fighter jets, capable of penetrating Russia’s air defence, are still rare. Special forces that would, a crucial asset, are stuck in Africa and struggle to enlist enough quality recruits.

  The US is slowly restocking their arsenals, with new long-range precise ammunitions, but will prefer to send them to the Pacific. It preserves a sizeable conventional deterrence in Europe, including 70,000 troops, hundreds of prepositioned armoured vehicles and dozens of fighter jets.

  Yet, this is not sufficient to counter a Russian invasion in a country like Ukraine – and Washington just cannot afford a war with Russia now that China has become so powerful.

  We can endlessly reflect on what drives Russia in amassing its vast military presence on Ukraine’s border, on how we came to this point, the misgivings and frustrations on both sides.

  What is clear, however, is that we enter a new tournament of great power politics and that Europe arrives at the start not as a strong, unified team, but as throng of plump puerile pygmies.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 01/19/2022 – 02:00

• Conspiracies As Realities, Realities As Conspiracies
  Conspiracies As Realities, Realities As Conspiracies

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AmGreatness.com,

  American politics over the last half decade has become immersed in a series of conspiracy charges leveled by Democrats against their opponents that, in fact, are happening because of them and through them.

  

  The consequences of these conspiracies becoming reality and reality revealing itself as conspiracy have been costly to American prestige, honor, and security. As we move away from denouncing realists as conspiracists, and self-pronounced “realists” are revealed as the true conspirators, let’s review a few of the more damaging of these events. 

  Russians on the Brain 

  Consider that the Trump election of 2016, the transition, and the first two years of the Trump presidency were undermined by a media-progressive generated hoax of “Russian collusion.”

  The “bombshell” and “walls are closing in” mythologies dominated the network news and cable outlets. It took five years to expose them as rank agit-prop. 

  Robert Mueller and his “dream team” consumed $40 million of Americans’ money and 22 months of our time—to find the nothingburger that most of the country already knew was nothing. Yet the subtext of the 2018 Democratic takeover of the House was the media narrative that Trump, as Hillary Clinton put it, was an “illegitimate” president, due to Russian collusion. 

  Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper claimed on national television that Trump was a “Russian asset.” Former CIA head John Brennan assured the nation that the president was “treasonous,” due to his supposed “lies to the American people.”  

  All sorts of politicians, retired military, and news anchors echoed the charges. The lies and myths of has-been British spy Christopher Steele made him a leftist hero. They were repeated ad nauseam as truth.  

  FBI grandees like James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith, and others destroyed their careers in their obsessions over Trump. In the process of destroying themselves, they also nearly wrecked the reputation of the FBI. The Pentagon has the lowest popular support in modern memory. The CIA is more feared by millions of Americans than by our enemies. 

  Steele could not produce any evidence to back up his scurrilous charges. The inspector general of the Department of Justice found little evidence to substantiate any of the charges. James Comey and Robert Mueller under oath both pleaded either memory problems or denied any knowledge about the FBI’s use of Steele and the role his fake dossier played.  

  Most of the televised accusers, when under oath before Congress, admitted they had no evidence for their flamboyant charges. Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who claimed the dossier was authentic and that Trump was compromised, has repeatedly been revealed as a liar. In various televised House hearings, he kept getting caught either fabricating, misrepresenting, or warping evidence before his own committee. 

  No matter. Hillary Clinton and the Left kept pounding “collusion.” The more it was proven false, the more they shouted the lie.  

  Finally, special counsel John Durham’s investigations, some authentic media investigative reporting, and the preponderance of evidence showed not only that Trump did not collude with the Russians, but that the entire charge was a sick sort of projection on the part of Hillary Clinton and her vassals.  

  Steele concocted the election-cycle fantasy using a former Clintonite totem in Moscow. Another source was the now indicted Igor Danchenko ( a “primary sub-source”), who was working at the leftist Brookings Institution while feeding Steele.  

  A cynic might look at this sad chapter and conclude that Hillary Clinton sought to destroy her opponent by paying Christopher Steele to manufacture fantasies fabricated from left-wing and former Clinton associates. Then she used the media, the FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department to seed the farce while hiding her own role behind three firewalls including the DNC, the Perkins Coie law firm, and Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS.  

  The ultimate irony?  

  Hillary Clinton did collude with those claiming to have Russian connections to warp an election, and she projected her likely illegal activity onto the target of her attacks. No conspiracist could trump such reality. Will Merrick Garland look at her role in this episode as he conducts his insurrectionist investigations concerning efforts to undermine an election? 

  What was the post facto cost when such former “conspiracies” became realities, and former realities became the true conspiracies? The damage done was considerable. 

  We once realistically used the Russians to balance the Chinese. But the Left, which appeased Vladimir Putin with “reset,” now flipped to create a climate of hate indiscriminately against all Russians. 

  In this tortuous process from reset to collusion, we have empowered Putin among Russians as the heroic American resistor. We lost leverage against the Chinese. We ended up in a situation today where we are talking tough but are, in fact, sinking in a quagmire of fake collusion, the Afghanistan debacle, the Biden train wreck of 2021, and the woke hysteria. All that is making the calculating Putin wonder whether U.S. deterrence is now a phantom. In other words, we look ridiculous. 

  The Lab We Dare Not Speak 

  Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, the level-4 security Wuhan Institute of Virology lab has been central to all narratives about the origins, nature, and spread of the pandemic.  

  There have been four cycles of these fantasies and realities.

  First came the frantic denials of a connection by the Chinese government, most of the Americana media, a consortium of scientists mostly dependent on Drs. Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci for generous support, corporate grandees with lucrative concessions in China, and the federal health apparat itself.  

  Second, the iron-clad denial of a human-engineered virus waned by the weight of its own contradictions. Evidence, at first circumstantial, later nearly overwhelming, seeped through the Wuhan denial wall of social media, traditional media, the Chinese government, and the U.S. establishment. Those interests all shared a common purpose of seeing Trump, the supposed Sinophobe,  gone and the bat/pangolin fiction conspiracy apparently seemed yet one more way to achieve this goal. 

  A third phase then emerged, as the true role of Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance was revealed, as the pathetic international and Chinese-fed “investigations” collapsed in conflicts of interests, as interagency emails emerged from the CDC, NIH, and NIAID, and as a hothead Dr. Fauci protested too much in his paranoid denials before the Senate of his own role in any subsidized gain-of-function research. The American people and some media began to resist the intimidation and look at the evidence. 

  Now we are at the fourth and final stage of the catastrophe. A once esteemed Fauci has been reduced to a cranky apparatchik. At best he will soon retire with some disgrace, and at worst he will be subject to years of investigation and litigation once his left-wing defenders in Congress, who once found him so useful, lose their majority. 

  Most others who fiercely denied the human genesis of the supposed “bat” virus have either retired or resigned from their posts at the CDC and NIH. Democratic politicos have stopped slandering those who argued there was no natural origin to the pandemic.  

  Indeed, they are now parroting the once reviled advice of Dr. Scott Atlas. Stanford immunologists and epidemiologists are no longer smeared but quoted with approval. The Left now seeks to ease the lockdowns, to admit that thousands died “with” rather than “because” of the virus, and to concede that natural immunity is valuable. It agrees that there are therapies and carefully targeted quarantines other than just serial booster vaccinations and mass lockdowns to lower the death toll of the COVID strains and the never-ending mass quarantines. That Biden, not Trump, is suffering from the lockdowns offers added incentive to its revisionism. 

  As the authority, power, and reputation of Fauci, Inc. waned, several scientists and government investigators are now liberated. They are demonstrating why the engineered virus is wholly different from its natural cousins, and why its manufactured nature is so infectious to humankind. We are getting close to learning, despite vestigial Chinese and U.S. government pushback, how SARS-CoV-2 was birthed, why it spread so quickly, and why so many denied its origins and nature. 

  Pause for a minute and consider: The origins of the greatest pandemic since the 1918-19 flu—one that has killed millions, occurring at the zenith of global scientific progress, world cooperation, and technological achievement—were simply hidden from the global public.  

  Worse, anyone with legitimate questions about the official Chinese and Fauci narratives of a naturally occurring bat or pangolin virus that leaped over to humankind, one with no relationship to the nearby Wuhan lab and without prior animal infections, was targeted for character assassination.  

  Again, we are left with the real conspiracy that blamed the realists as conspiracists. The Chinese and Anthony Fauci played the role of Hillary Clinton, in accusing others of anti-scientific conspiracies as they wove scenarios that were dubious but aimed at aligning powerful figures in a conspiracy of sorts to smother the emerging and astounding truth of their own culpability.  

  The January 6 “Coup” 

  Finally, we come to the third case of projection, yet another conspiracy to create conspiracists.  

  The January 6 riot was disgraceful. But it was a one-day spontaneous, chaotic, illegal entrance in and desecration of the Capitol by assorted buffoons.  

  We now know that even according to the FBI investigation—that was and is eager to prove a coup—January 6 was not a carefully planned putsch as Joe Biden so blatantly lied recently.  

  New insurrectionist indictments—by Attorney General Merrick Garland in response to left-wing pressures—targeted a disorganized and psychodramatic group of self-important Oath Keepers wannabes and poseurs. In contrast, serious insurrectionists do not leave their guns behind in order to abide by strict D.C. firearms laws. They do not ride to their rendezvous at the Capitol in golf carts. And they do not stage an insurrection by being unarmed as they scatter about, yell, confront police, raise hell, and meander through the Capitol.  

  If these had been serious insurrectionists, they would have followed the Antifa model: arriving stealthily in the many hundreds if not thousands, melting through crowds to assigned locations, in black with padded body armor, helmets, various clubs, and carefully coordinating their weeks-long and sustained violence on approved social media.  

  Or if they were serious about using extra-legal means, they would (to take some non-random examples) encourage retired officers to pen a letter calling on the military to use force to remove a president and advocate in national journals that the military plan for a coup against the elected president, or write op-eds suggesting the president leave “the sooner the better,” or brag about a “conspiracy” and a “coup” of CEOs, who coordinate with the rich, with street activists, and with leftists to “stem the flow of information,” to modulate violence in the street, to flood voting precincts with subsidized ballot workers, and to warp the allotment of resources—and post facto brag in TIME magazine about the successful effort. Or finally perhaps they would just do as Hillary Clinton did: advise their preferred candidate (as she did Joe Biden) never to accept a ballot count that goes other than his preferred way. 

  Then there is the work of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who created a January 6 investigation committee. In an unprecedented move, she vetoed the House minority leader’s nominations to the committee. She instead picked her own. 

  Only two Republicans were willing to serve. They apparently had to fulfill her three criteria of voting for the Trump impeachment, of being so unpopular with Republican voters that their congressional futures will end in 2021 and being on record as praising Nancy Pelosi. 

  The committee has one left-wing agenda: ferreting out any statement by an elected Republican official deemed too ambiguous about the riot being an insurrection. It seeks to cast them as Jefferson Davis-style Confederates, deserving of removal from Congress for plotting “insurrection,” along the Civil War standards of the 1868 14th Amendment.  

  The committee members are not interested in reopening the investigation of the officer who shot Ashli Babbitt, a man who may not have ever been sufficiently interrogated by investigators.  

  They seem indifferent to the likely presence and use of FBI informants.  

  They care not a whit about the treatment of some uncharged suspects in solitary confinement or detained in primitive jail conditions. 

  Nor are they concerned about the asymmetrical and weaponized federal reaction to January 6 when compared to general government indifference about the summer 2020 planned riots.  

  As far as entering federal property to do damage to sacred sites, in May 2020 hundreds sought to break into the White House grounds, injured dozens of secret service agents, and posed such a threat that President Trump was removed to a bunker. All that is now forgotten. 

  Nor is the committee concerned about the role of prominent Americans in encouraging that summer’s violence, looting, arson, and rioting. 

  Current Vice President Kamala Harris boasted during the summer 2020 riots that such organized violence would go on and on, and would and should not cease: 

  They’re not going to stop. They’re not going to stop. This is a movement, I’m telling you. They’re not gonna stop. And everyone beware because they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop before Election Day and they’re not going to stop after Election Day. And everyone should take note of that. They’re not gonna let up and they should not.

  Had Trump voiced Harris’ encouragement of street violence, he would now be indicted.

  In investigating a supposed conspiracy, why does the committee conspire to ensure that thousands of hours of videos are not released that might give a more accurate picture of the culpable who prompted the Capitol riot, who participated, and the reaction of the Capitol police?  

  Why conspire not to force the attorney general and FBI director in closed session to list all FBI informants involved in the riot, or any intergovernmental law enforcement communications about their use?  

  Why not simply have a comprehensive investigation about 2020-21 domestic violence of all sorts, and begin with summer 2020 and continue to January 6?  

  Why not allow the nominated Republicans skeptical of the official January 6 narrative to vie on the committee in the pursuit of truth with their opponents? Instead of equating the riot with the Civil War, Pearl Harbor, or 9/11, why not issue a report about the long history of violence in the Capitol to adjudicate comparisons with the January 6 riot? 

  The answers are obvious. A midterm election looms in fewer than 10 months. Given Biden’s current historic unpopularity, given the failure of his policies, given generic anger at the Democratic Party, the campaign talking points are not going to be the border, Afghanistan, inflation, energy, race relations, or the build back better multitrillion dollar fiasco.  

  Instead, it will be Trump! “Democracy dies in 2022!!” and “January 6!!!” 

  Ponder the costs of this January 6 exaggerated narrative. The U.S. Army is now running war games designed to defeat fantasy right-wing domestic terrorists. The FBI is monitoring PTAs and schoolchildren’s parents. 

  As it searches for “white supremacists” and uses indoctrination educational methods to ensure the end of “white privilege” and “white rage,” the military polls record lows in public support. More than half the country distrusts it. Efforts at recruitment are stalling, despite generous bonuses.  

  Vaccination mandates apply even to those with acquired immunity from past infection and are also winnowing the ranks. The military failure in Afghanistan and its diversity, equity and inclusion cannibalism have stirred China and Russia to recognize an opportunity. In tandem both now increasingly salivate over Taiwan and Ukraine. 

  January 6 has been used to slander anyone supporting voter IDs, which are common in Europe and most of the states.  

  Joe Biden—who in his earlier career wished it known that officials like segregationist George Wallace, Fritz Hollings, and James Eastland were friendly to him—has a long history of racist “gaffes.” He knows he will either not be reelected, or will not run again, or he will be removed from office, or resign. For a failing Biden and a soon to be thrown out narrow congressional Democratic majority, it is now or never. 

  The Costs 

  The collusion, COVID-19, and January 6 narratives have been terribly costly to the nation.  

  Conspiracy projection has split apart the country. The Left has fought efforts to learn the full truth, as they project conspiracies to disguise conspirators. 

  They have grievously weakened the reputation and authority of the U.S. government here and abroad.  

  We are lectured that “democracy dies” if the Democrats lose elections and “voter suppression” requires drastic counteraction—even as the Left goes after the Electoral College, the nine-justice Supreme Court, the filibuster, the 50-state union, and the constitutional primacy of states to set voting laws. 

  All this is as pathetic as it is fatal to the survival of the American project.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/18/2022 – 23:50

• Russia Launches Snap War Drills In Belarus Aimed At Thwarting 'NATO Aggression'
  Russia Launches Snap War Drills In Belarus Aimed At Thwarting ‘NATO Aggression’

  There have been two major developments which threaten to further put Russia and NATO on a collision course in Ukraine. First, Russia and Belarus have initiated joint snap military drills on the latter’s soil, with a large contingency of Russian troops arriving Tuesday in the country for a new wave of military exercises. 

  Second, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has unveiled in a speech before UK parliament delivered Monday that Britain will send Ukraine weapons as part of a new defense assistance package in order to help “defend its borders” against Russian aggression.

  

  All of this comes the very week following a series of meetings between Kremlin officials and NATO, which failed to produce any results or even an extension of dialogue, for now at least. This also as on Tuesday Germany Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock met Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow for the first time, as Berlin has vowed to do all it can to “guarantee Ukraine’s security.”

  The AFP described that in Belarus, video put out by the Lukashenko government showed “columns of military vehicles including tanks being unloaded from trains blanketed in snow.”

  A Russian defense ministry statement specifically informed the West that the fresh drills are aimed presence at NATO, raising tensions higher:

  Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin summoned dozens of foreign military diplomats stationed in Moscow — including 16 from NATO member countries — to announce the drills in Belarus, which he said were aimed at “thwarting external aggression.”

  Video published by Belarus’ defense ministry:

  The Russian official additionally informed NATO diplomats that its “S-400 missile systems, which Russia has controversially sold to NATO member Turkey, would be deployed as part of the exercises in Belarus.”

  Western backers of Ukraine are also now busy ramping up support, with the announced UK arms supplies already being flown into Kiev:

  “We have taken the decision to supply Ukraine with light anti-armor defensive weapons systems,” Wallace told the Commons on Monday, adding that “a small number” of British troops would provide training to help Kyiv’s forces in using them.

  This reportedly includes anti-tanks weapons, but it has remained officially undisclosed how many weapons are being supplied at what type. “Let me be clear: this support is for short-range and clearly defensive weapon capabilities; they are not strategic weapons and pose no threat to Russia; they are to use in self-defense,” Wallace told MPs on Monday.

  Of course, this military build-up in the region greatly increases the chances of a ‘provocation’ which could lead to a shooting war at any moment. Washington has already floated the likelihood of a false flag incident, which it accused Moscow of preparing.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/18/2022 – 23:30

• COVID Lab-Leak Whitewash Has Been 'The Death Of Science' Says Professor Who Found 'Unique Fingerprints'
  COVID Lab-Leak Whitewash Has Been ‘The Death Of Science’ Says Professor Who Found ‘Unique Fingerprints’

  University of London professor Angus Dalgleish, who co-authored a paper in summer 2020 after spotting “unique fingerprints” in Covid-19 samples that point to genetic manipulation, says that he’s been the victim of a “disgusting whitewash,” and that anyone suggesting a non-natural origin for Covid-19 has been silenced by peers.

  

  “This goes back to the days of Copernicus and Galileo – it is the death of science,” said the oncologist – who in 1984 discovered how HIV enters and kills cells.

  Dalgleish’s work was roundly rejected by a string of journalists before it was eventually published in a ‘watered-down form,’ according to the Express.

  In February 2020, the Lancet had published a letter that “strongly condemned conspiracy theories” suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin. This highly influential letter – subsequently cited in thousands of scientific publications – was signed by 27 experts including Wellcome Trust head and former Sage member Sir Jeremy Farrar.

  However, it has since emerged that two weeks before the letter was published, Sir Jeremy stated in private emails that some senior scientists believed a ‘likely explanation’ was that the virus was man-made. -Express

  Indeed, Farrar led a February 1, 2020 teleconference (one day after Farrar emailed Anthony Fauci about a Zero Hedge article suggesting Covid may have come from the Wuhan Institute of Virology) – in which one virologist was “80 percent sure this thing had come out of a lab,” with others sharing his view.

  

  Dalgleish is the author of a book on Covid which claims the virus has “no credible natural ancestor.” He says his team found amino acids within the Covid-19 spike protein with a positive charge – allowing the virus to cling to negative parts of the body.

  But it was highly unusual to find so many positive charges in a row because they also repel each other, he said.

  “We realised when they released the sequence of the virus it broke the laws of physics for a natural virus meaning it was genetically modified. 

  “At the time my position was supported by Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6 who now chairs the University of London board of trustees.”

  However, when they tried to publish their work they were turned down by numerous papers, including the Lancet. 

  “My paper was rejected within five hours”, he said. “Normally it takes three weeks before it is even peer reviewed.” -Express

  According to Dalgleish, “It was a political decision for this to be suppressed,” adding that after the paper was released, “I was ostracised. I was fearful – really frightened at the way I was being treated.”

  “I was told I was not an expert on coronavirus’ and should just shut up. People tried to push us away. We were told our theory had no rationale and it was a conspiracy theory. I am so angry about this. I have more virus papers cited than most virology experts and they tried to push me aside. 

  “They did not even look at the science. It was obvious it was a gain of function escape from a lab and I say escape, but that is generous. We had this data in late February after the sequences were released.

  “This has been a whitewash. This whole thing has killed science. Science is meant to look at evidence. It is truly unbelievable.“

  According to Jacques van Helden, a bioinformatics professor at Aix-Marseille University in France, Peter Daszak’s February 2020 Lancet letter effectively shut down debate over the origins of Covid-19.

  “By labelling anyone with different views a conspiracy theorist, the Lancet letter was the worst form of bullying in full contravention of the scientific method,” said van Helden,” adding “To say that something has leaked from a lab does not make it a conspiracy theory.”

  “Why was that letter signed by so many people? Why can’t we discuss this issue in a scientific journal? I do not want to have to resort to an open exchange on Twitter.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/18/2022 – 23:10

• As US Homebuilders Crash, China Property Developers Set To Surge As PBOC Sends "Clear Easing Signal"
  As US Homebuilders Crash, China Property Developers Set To Surge As PBOC Sends “Clear Easing Signal”

  Over the weekend, we said that as a major divergence has emerged between China and the US, where the former is now actively easing – ostensibly to support the country’s reeling property market but also to prevent a complete collapse in GDP, by cutting rates and injecting gobs of new credit – and the former is about to undertake a major tightening cycle, a trade has emerged to capitalize on this divergence whereby one should pair trade a long in beaten down Chinese property developers while shorting US homebuilders…

  

  … this trade is starting to outperform, with US homebuilders tumbling on Tuesday with some builders sinking by the most since May, amid fears of a slowdown in the property market due to higher years.  The S&P Supercomposite Homebuilding Index plunged by as much as 5.2% with all members are trading lower on Tuesday. KB Home was down as much as 8.5% for its biggest intraday decline since May 2021,  LGI Homes down by as much as 7.8%, Meritage Homes lower by as much as 6.4% for its worst intraday decline since May 2021, and Lennar sliding as much as 6.3% to also notch its sharpest decline since May.

  Meanwhile, as Bloomberg’s Wes Goodman writes, China stocks may draw some support amid the global market rout, especially if the yuan slides after the PBOC said it plans to use more monetary policy tools to spur the economy. China bonds jumped on Tuesday prior to the announcement, though still supported by the outlook for more easing. The yuan also weakened as the central bank said it will not allow one-way moves in the currency, while Goldman strategists said that the PBOC press conference sent “clear policy easing signals.”

  

  The larger Asia stock market is starting under a cloud following the U.S. rout, triggered by the relentless advance in Treasury yields and forecasts for Fed tightening, while Asian currencies may lose some appeal as the dollar rises. However, keep an eye on China’s property developers now that Beijing has made it clear it will backstop the housing sector and provide support to prevent China’s largest property developer, Country Garden, from becoming the next Evergrande.

  And sure enough, a real-time update of the chart shown above shows that the relationship between easing China and tightening US may have now troughed …

  

  … and may be on its way to becoming what we dubbed the “trade of 2022.”

  Will this be the trade of 2022https://t.co/4rH2QdDUv7 pic.twitter.com/dLZO3p0Npp

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 9, 2022

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  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/18/2022 – 22:50

• Israel Used Pegasus Spyware Against Own Citizens For Warrantless Surveillance
  Israel Used Pegasus Spyware Against Own Citizens For Warrantless Surveillance

  Authored by Brett Wilkins via Common Dreams,

  Digital privacy advocates were alarmed but not surprised Tuesday by a report alleging that police in Israel used NSO’s Pegasus spyware against Israeli citizens, including opponents of former right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

  According to Calcalist, the special operations cyber unit of Israel’s police remotely planted the private company’s spyware on phones belonging to political activists, mayors, former government employees, and others, “taking over their devices and having the ability to listen to all their calls and read all their messages.”

  

  The reporting indicates that the extrajudicial surveillance occurred without court supervision, and police did not request search or bugging warrants for the targeted individuals—who were suspected of no crimes. “After all the other surveillance scandals have been exposed, the chickens come home to roost,” tweeted Israeli-American journalist Mairav Zonszein. “Not surprising. What will be is if justice is served.”

  Those scandals include repeated revelations that NSO’s spyware was surreptitiously installed on the devices of dissidents, human rights defenders, journalists, and others around the world—especially in other Middle Eastern nations—as well as reporting last month that Pegasus was used by an unknown party or parties to hack the iPhones of nearly a dozen U.S. State Department officials.

  NSO, an Israeli company, says Pegasus is solely intended for crime and terrorism prevention.

  “However,” reports Calcalist, “NSO’s spyware was also used by police for phishing purposes: attempts to phish for information in an intelligence target’s phone without knowing in advance that the target committed any crime. Pegasus was installed in a cellphone of a person close to a senior politician in order to try and find evidence relating to a corruption investigation.”

  Roee Neuman, a spokesperson for the Black Flags, a former protest movement that staged weekly anti-Netanyahu demonstrations, demanded Tuesday that Israeli Minister of Public Security Omer Bar-Lev “immediately” release the names of people the police targeted with Pegasus.

  There is nothing surprising in the news that the Israeli police has been using NSO’s Pegasus to spy on Bibi’s political opponents among others.

  Israel is a surveillance state par excellence, only it manages to cloak itself with a democratic facade. https://t.co/3KLXPtNkxa

  — Marwa Fatafta مروة فطافطة (@marwasf) January 18, 2022

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  “This is not the time for silence,” he tweeted. “Now is the time for action.” John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto-based Citizen Lab who has been following Pegasus for six years, tweeted in response to the new report: “Let me tell you, this is depressingly familiar. Give authorities secret, unaccountable hacking powers, and abuse is only a matter of time.”

  Eric Goldstein, Human Rights Watch’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, asked, “When it comes to [Netanyahu] and NSO’s business model, is any of this surprising?”

  Responding to the widespread outrage in Israel over the new revelations, Israeli journalist and +972 executive director Haggai Matar tweeted that criticism of such surveillance must also “extend to all intrusive and oppressive tools used against Palestinians.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/18/2022 – 22:30

• Olympic Athletes Advised Not To Bring Phones To Beijing Over Spying Concerns
  Olympic Athletes Advised Not To Bring Phones To Beijing Over Spying Concerns

  Athletes who are preparing to travel to Beijing for the Winter Games next month might want to think about leaving their personal smart phones at home. The reason: a new app developed by Beijing to track Olympic athletes’ health data has been found to have several startling security flaws, according to a group of Canadian researchers called Citizen Lab.

  Citizen Lab told the NYT and other news organizations that it had shared its findings with the Beijing Organizing Committee on Dec. 3 but had not received any response. As a result, they’re warning all athletes about the app’s flaws, news that probably shouldn’t come as a surprise given the CCP’s reputation for mass surveillance.

  According to the NYT, the app – called MY2022 –  is designed to transmit coronavirus test results, travel information and other personal data “failed to verify the signature used in encrypted transfers, or didn’t encrypt the data at all,” according to the report by Citizen Lab.

  But the organization also found that the app will actively censor content viewed on users’ phones: a series of political terms have been marked for censorship in the code.

  A Canberra-based cybersecurity company even went so far as to advise athletes to leave their phones at home, according to the Financial Review.

  

  The MY2022 app was created by the Beijing Organizing Committee supposedly to track and share COVID-related medical information among athletes during the Games. As for whom these data will be shared with, the app doesn’t make clear.

  The researchers also claimed that the app failed to validate SSL certificates, which are needed to authenticate a website’s identity and enable an encrypted connection. This flaw can be exploited by hackers hoping to transmit the data to some other malicious site.

  “Such data can be read by any passive eavesdropper, such as someone in range of an unsecured WiFi access point, someone operating a WiFi hotspot, or an Internet Service Provider or other telecommunications company,” the report said.

  According to the NYT, the worries about the app’s shortcomings “underscore broader worries about censorship and surveillance during the Games in China, which has one of the world’s most sophisticated surveillance and censorship systems.”

  As a sop to the west, the Chinese government has already promised foreign athletes that they would be able to access the open Internet during their time in China.

  The Games are slated to begin Feb. 4, but several countries including the US, the UK, Japan and Australia have announced diplomatic boycotts of the Games over concerns about human rights in Xinjiang, a far-flung western province that’s home to most of China’s indigenous Uyghers.

  China has entered the final stages of planning for the pandemic. The app, called MY2022, was designed to bolster those precautions, enabling electronic links between the government and participants to contact trace in the event of any outbreaks. It resembles a broader system of app-based health codes used to control population movements in the event of outbreaks.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/18/2022 – 22:10

• Round 2? Eastern US Braces For Two Winter Storms
  Round 2? Eastern US Braces For Two Winter Storms

  A wintry outbreak appears to be ongoing in the eastern US as millions of folks in Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states prepare for two more winter storms expected this week. 

  AccuWeather forecasters expected a wintry mix Wednesday night into Thursday and a second storm could produce accumulating snow Friday night into Saturday.

  “The energy for the first storm is moving onshore along the Pacific coast on Monday, and if that catches up to the front a certain way, there could be a narrow, sneaky zone of 3 inches of snow from parts of the Tennessee Valley to the lower mid-Atlantic coast in the Wednesday night to Thursday time frame,” AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Bernie Rayno said.

  

  Rayno warned, “this isn’t the only storm we have to watch this week.” He said a larger storm would develop in the Southern states and potentially move northward towards Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states and collide with “another fresh injection of Arctic air” between Friday and early Saturday.

  

  The next round of cold air will keep average temperatures in New York City well below a 30-year average through the end of the month. This means heating demand will rise and put a bid under natural gas prices. 

  

  So far this month, natgas prices linked to Henry Hub contracts have jumped as much as 36% on cold weather and snowstorms. 

  

  Bloomberg Intelligence’s senior US oil/gas analyst Vincent Piazza was overly bullish on natgas for the remainder of the month. He wrote in a note Tuesday: 

  Weather across most of the US over the next 8-14 days should be more bullish for Henry Hub prices, yet the rally in natural gas production is pushing them below our bearish view around $4 per million BTUs. Physical-market conditions remain somewhat clouded during heating season, and our confidence in the trajectory of the winter strip persists. Still, levels below $4 seem pessimistic, compared with our negative stance when prices surpassed $6 in 4Q. January and February remain crucial for draws, and operators’ capital discipline in 2022 isn’t likely to drive outsized growth in gas volume.

  Last week, natgas prices recorded their largest weekly gains since November. We suspect as temperatures remain frigid and the prospects for additional winter storms to batter the eastern US, a bid will stay under energy prices this month.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/18/2022 – 21:50

• Biden's Infrastructure Bill, Now Signed Into Law, Mandates "Vehicle Kill Switches" By 2026
  Biden’s Infrastructure Bill, Now Signed Into Law, Mandates “Vehicle Kill Switches” By 2026

  The rumors we first reported on back in December have turned out to be true: the United States federal government is apparently in the process of trying to force automakers to install kill switches in their vehicles that authorities can use to shut down any newer vehicle.

  The law comes as part of President Biden’s infrastructure bill, which was recently signed into law, according to Yahoo. The government kill switch is – like all good thefts of civil liberties – being positioned as a “safety measure”. The mandate needs to be put into effect by 2026, Muscle Cars & Trucks reported.  

  We noted last month that former Rep. Bob Barr, writing for The Daily Caller, called the measure included in the bill “disturbingly short on details”, but for the fact that the proposed device must “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.”

  Which, of course, is code for some kind of device that is constantly on and monitoring your vehicle – and will likely have the power to shut down your vehicle anytime it wants. 

  “This is a privacy disaster in the making, and the fact that the provision made it through the Congress reveals — yet again — how little its members care about the privacy of their constituents,” The Daily Caller wrote. 

  

  It appears that in President Biden’s future, not only will you not be in charge of your own personal health decisions, but you also won’t be in charge of whether or not you can fire up your car, which you bought with your hard-earned money, to drive it somewhere, when you deem fit. 

  That decision will now “rest in the hands of an algorithm”, the report said. Similar monitoring and control devices have faced constitutional opposition, the report notes, “notably with the 5th Amendment’s right to not self-incriminate, and the 6th Amendment’s right to face one’s accuser.”

  Barr concluded: “Unless this regulatory mandate is not quickly removed or defanged by way of an appropriations rider preventing its implementation, the freedom of the open road that individual car ownership brought to the American Dream, will be but another vague memory of an era no longer to be enjoyed by future generations.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/18/2022 – 21:30

• Man Suffers "Agonizing" Penile Blood Clot Caused By COVID
  Man Suffers “Agonizing” Penile Blood Clot Caused By COVID

  As it turns out, one man’s bodily reaction to COVID has proven that the virus truly isn’t confined to the throat and upper respiratory tract.

  According to a foreign medical journal, an Iranian man has drawn the interest of doctors after reporting “agonizing” pain in his penis that turned out to have been caused by blood clots that seriously threatened the man’s sexual health.

  The man, who wasn’t named in the news reports about the incident, had suffered penile pain for three days before being seen by a urologist in Iran, who referred him for tests. Keep in mind: one of the side effects of mRNA COVID jabs is they cause blood clots in the heart.

  

  The patient’s discomfort began following an erection while having sex, according to the 41-year-old married man, who had not experienced any trauma to his pelvic area that might explain his behavior.

  Scientists have learned over the course of the pandemic that COVID doesn’t just cause respiratory symptoms: One of its other features is to increase the tendency of blood to clot. In fact, this is often the cause of death.

  “Roughly, 20% to 50% of hospitalized patients with COVID infection have abnormal coagulation tests,” Morteza Bagheri wrote.

  “Searching the literature showed no previously published similar case of deep dorsal penile vein thrombosis following COVID infection and our patient is the first reported case,” Bagheri continued.

  Penile complications have occurred in the US, too. A 69-year-old man in Ohio suffered a three-hour erection – a condition called priapism – due to blood clotting problems in his penis.

  Writing in the American Journal of American Medicine, a team of medics said that they believed COVID had caused clots to form in his penis, trapping blood in the erection chambers. Doctors had to drain blood from the penis using a needle because ice packs didn’t work to bring the stiffness down.

  Over in France, another man in his 60s had to go through the same procedure after COVID left him with an erection that lasted for four hours.

  However, the damage caused to the man’s blood vessels during this episode could make it more difficult for him to get future erections.

  None of this is news, of course: As we reported last year, one study established a link between erectile dysfunction and COVID.

  “In our pilot study, we found that men who previously did not complain of erectile dysfunction developed pretty severe erectile dysfunction after the onset of COVID-19 infection,” the study’s authors wrote.

  This doesn’t bode well for birth rates, which have fallen substantially in recent years in the West, as Tesla CEO Elon Musk pointed out in a series of tweets earlier this week.

  We should be much more worried about population collapse

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 18, 2022

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  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/18/2022 – 21:10

• Israel Offers UAE 'Intelligence & Security' Help After Deadly Houthi Drone Attack
  Israel Offers UAE ‘Intelligence & Security’ Help After Deadly Houthi Drone Attack

  Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for a deadly drone and ballistic missile attack which rocked the United Arab Emirates’ capital of Abu Dhabi on Monday. The strike, which demonstrated an increasingly sophisticated capability among the Houthis, hit an oil facility owned by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. A Houthi military spokesman said that the group “carried out… a successful military operation” against “important and sensitive Emirati sites and installations.”

  “The attack killed two Indian nationals and one Pakistani as three tankers at the site exploded, police said,” The Associated Press reports. “Six people were also wounded at the facility, which is near Al-Dhafra Air Base, a massive Emirati installation also home to American and French forces.”

  

  The AP also suggested a possible attack during the same aerial offensive which hit Abu Dhabi International Airport, given a fire broke out there. Subsequent satellite images which emerged showed significant damage at the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. facility, which is the state-owned energy firm providing much of the Arab Gulf country’s national oil wealth.

  On Tuesday, there was a surprise offer of intelligence assistance from Israel, which follows the September 2020 signing of normalization between the UAE and Israel under the Abraham Accords. 

  Prime Minister Naftali Bennett wrote a letter to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed saying that he “ordered the Israeli security establishment to provide their counterparts in the UAE with any assistance” in order to defend against future potential attacks.  

  The Times of Israel reports that PM Bennett said the following: 

  “Israel stands with the UAE. I stand with [Crown Prince] Mohammed bin Zayed. The world should stand against terror.”

  In a letter to bin Zayed, Bennett said Jerusalem was committed to working with Abu Dhabi “in the ongoing battle against extremist forces in the region, and we will continue to partner with you to defeat our common enemies.”

  The UAE has vowed revenge, with the UAE-Saudi coalition have already launched fresh strikes “targeting Houthi camps and headquarters” in Sanaa, according to Gulf media. 

  VIA @Quicktake: Satellite photos show the aftermath of a deadly drone strike on an oil facility in Abu Dhabi.Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for Monday’s attack https://t.co/OcACrqqyi3 pic.twitter.com/8SvKsGNnwG

  — Traffic Updates + Useful Info (@trafficbutter) January 18, 2022

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  At the same time UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan announced that “We condemn the Houthi terrorist militia’s targeting of civilian areas and facilities on UAE soil today… this sinful targeting will not go unpunished.” A UAE statement further dubbed it a “heinous criminal escalation.”

  The timing of this increased security partnership between Israel and the UAE – which up until the tail-end of the Trump administration didn’t even have official relations – is further interesting given the ongoing diplomatic talks between the Saudis and Iranians which strive to mutually reopen embassies. Certainly Israel getting deeper into assisting the coalition in the Yemen conflict will be alarming for Tehran, pitting archenemies Israel and Iran on opposite sides of another regional war in a more direct way.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/18/2022 – 20:50

• WHO Crushes Biden COVID Plan, Says "No Evidence At All" That Healthy Kids Needs 'Booster' Jabs
  WHO Crushes Biden COVID Plan, Says “No Evidence At All” That Healthy Kids Needs ‘Booster’ Jabs

  The Chief Scientist of the World Health Organization has just crushed what little credibility the Biden administration’s COVID response team had by confirming what most parents’ common-sense already told them – that there is no evidence that healthy children need booster doses of COVID-19 vaccine.

  

  WHO Chief Scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said Tuesday that “there is no evidence right now that healthy children or adolescents need boosters. No evidence at all.”

  “The aim is to protect the most vulnerable, to protect those at highest risk of severe disease and dying. Those are our elderly populations, immuno-compromised people with underlying conditions, but also healthcare workers,” she said.

  Watch her full statement here:

  Swaminathan’s comments come roughly two weeks after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) approved booster shots for adolescents aged 12 to 17 amid the current surge in coronavirus cases due to the highly contagious omicron variant.

  Israel has begun offering boosters to children as young as 12, Hungary has also done so, and Germany became the latest country to recommend that all children between ages of 12 and 17 receive a COVID-19 booster shot.

  Swaminathan said the agency’s advisory group, called Sage, or the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization, will meet later this week to consider how countries should think about giving booster shots.

  

  The initial jabs have proven ineffective and dangerous, contrary to the insistence of politicians, big money media, and college administrators.

  The case for boosters of more-of-the-same across many schools and college campuses has now become ludicrous.

  In fact, very recently, two Ivy League parents Joni McGary and Dr. Alison Pretti have decided up to stand-up to colleges determined to impose the experimental vaccine booster jab on students. Watch:

  Science is now on their side (well WHO “science” that is).

  However, we are sure Fauci, Walensky, and Biden will be full-court-press tomorrow to continue to pressure parents to get their kids (enter ‘whisper mode’) patriotically boosted… because of the science (as long as it’s not the WHO Chief Scientist’s “science”.)

  We give none other than Rand Paul the last word, since he has been among the most outspoken against Fauci’s (and Birx’s before him) so-called “science”…

  [why is the goverment] pushing booster vaccines on kids for a disease is that is less deadly in children than the season flu.”

  A good question Senator Paul.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/18/2022 – 20:30

• Supreme Court To Hear Appeal By Christian High School Football Coach Fired For Praying On The Field
  Supreme Court To Hear Appeal By Christian High School Football Coach Fired For Praying On The Field

  Having obviously solved all of the rest of the world’s problems, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided it is going to hear an appeal by a Christian former high school football coach who was suspended for refusing to stop praying on the football field.

  A decision on the case “could expand the religious rights of employees of public institutions,” according to Reuters. 

  The coach, Joseph Kennedy, served as assistant coach in Bremerton, Washington. Lower courts threw out his claims that the school district was violating his free speech and religious rights afforded to him by the U.S. Constitution. 

  Last year, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Kennedy, who had been an assistant coach at Bremerton High School from 2008 to 2015. 

  

  As Reuters notes, the heart of the issue relies in whether, as a public employee, the coach’s religious devotion among players is government speech, which can be regulated under Supreme Court precedents or a private act, which can’t. 

  Kennedy has argued his prayers and speeches were private in nature and “not part of his official duties as coach”. The school district disagreed and said such speeches and prayers could be coercive. Some parents argued their children were feeling “forced” to participate when they may not have wanted to. 

  Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said: “No child attending public school should have to pray to play school sports.”

  Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of First Liberty Institute, a conservative religious rights group helping to represent Kennedy, retorted: “No teacher or coach should lose their job for simply expressing their faith while in public. By taking this important case, the Supreme Court can protect the right of every American to engage in private religious expression, including praying in public, without fear of punishment.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/18/2022 – 20:10

• Eisenhower's Warning About The Military-Industrial Complex Is Still Valid
  Eisenhower’s Warning About The Military-Industrial Complex Is Still Valid

  Authored by William Lambers,

  With people profiting from armaments and their development, there will inevitably be the push for more weapons…

  

  President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address of Jan. 17, 1961, is just as relevant today as back then. Ike warned American citizens of the “military-industrial complex” and the dangers it presented to our nation and the world.

  Eisenhower was rightly wary of the armaments industry, which at that time was relatively new. Ike knew that such a massive arms industry could dominate the nation.

  Eisenhower said in his speech, “This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.”

  Resources for this arms industry would come from the American people. And if the arms industry is large, that burden becomes substantial. The more you finance the military, the less money you have for other priorities.

  With people profiting from armaments and their development, there will inevitably be the push for more weapons. Any arms buildup will encourage other nations to build up their weapons. Arms races remain a continuing danger.

  Eisenhower further warned:

  “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

  Ike believed the American people needed to be politically active when it came to regulating the arms industry. He said:

  “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

  We need to question military spending, especially when it comes at the expense of social programs. For example, the Build Back Better legislation is being rejected by many senators complaining about its costs. This means important social programs, such as the Child Tax Credit, free school meals and summer feeding for impoverished children won’t get passed because they claim they’re too expensive.

  Yet those same senators are not questioning a nearly $2 trillion program of nuclear weapons modernization. Spending on nuclear weapons simply encourages arms races with Russia and China.

  Eisenhower warned against such reckless military spending that comes at the expense of the American people.

  Ike said, “As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow.”

  Eisenhower emphasized in his speech the need for diplomacy and peacemaking. He said:

  “Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.”

  It is dangerous enough to spend so much on weapons, but to disregard diplomacy makes it worse. We have seen treaties rejected in recent years and no new ones being developed. The U.S. withdrew from the Open Skies Treaty and has failed to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. These are both initiatives Eisenhower originally proposed with the idea of helping to move us away from expensive arms races.

  We should expect our leaders to be mindful of Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex warning. As citizens we must watch closely to ensure we don’t become captive to a giant arms industry at the expense of all other aspects of life.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/18/2022 – 19:50

• Oil Spikes To Fresh 7-Year High After Key Iraq-Turkey Pipeline Explosion
  Oil Spikes To Fresh 7-Year High After Key Iraq-Turkey Pipeline Explosion

  Despite dollar strength today (and more worrisome ZeroCOVID actions from China), oil prices continued to rise but news after-hours that an explosion knocked out a major pipeline sparked more upside.

  OIL MARKET: Iraq-Turkey oil pipeline halted after explosion and fire, says a Turkish state-owned operator Botas. The line usually carries >450kb/d from northern Iraq into the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan | #OOTT Botas statement: https://t.co/kmwppy0yWJpic.twitter.com/GCOZFxb2rF

  — Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) January 18, 2022

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  Little is known about the cause, but the explosion at a pipeline connecting Northern Iraq and the port of Ceyhan in the Mediterranean has taken 450kb/d of supply offline in an already very tight crude oil market.

  

  The pipelines have been halted before: Back in 2012 blasts blamed on saboteurs halted the link for several months.

  The headlines sent oil prices spiking with WTI topping $86 for the first time since Oct 2014 (Brent neared $89)…

  

  This news follows a ballistic missile attack over the weekend, where Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen targeted oil infrastructure in the UAE.

  Pipeline operator Botas said the fire has been brought under control and cooling operations were under way.

  Botas said the it would reopen once the “necessary measures” had been taken, but gave no indication of timing.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/18/2022 – 19:30

• MIT-Educated Doctor Ordered To Undergo Psych Evaluation After Prescribing Ivermectin
  MIT-Educated Doctor Ordered To Undergo Psych Evaluation After Prescribing Ivermectin

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  An MIT-educated doctor who prescribed COVID patients Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine had her medical license suspended and was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

  

  Maine’s Board of Licensure in Medicine voted to pull Dr Meryl Nass’ medical license for 30 days after accusing her of circulating “misinformation” about COVID-19.

  Health officials asserted that Nass “constitutes an immediate jeopardy to the health and physical safety of the public who might receive her medical services” as a result of her procuring anti-viral drugs to treat COVID.

  The medical board voted to suspend Nass after receiving just two complaints that she was posting false information on her blog and on Twitter.

  A doctor informed the Maine board of how he was contacted by the son of a patient who claimed his father was “borderline delirious” and “not doing well” after being prescribed Ivermectin by Nass.

  Nass also self-reported to the medical board when she admitted obtaining Hydroxychloroquine by falsely claiming her COVID patient was suffering from Lyme disease.

  “This was the only way to get a potentially life-saving drug for my patient,” said Ness.

  This is why so few doctors are willing to speak up. In this crazy world, they are risking everything for not toeing the line. This is someone who showed actual courage. https://t.co/YaX5zHgUGL

  — DMChowdhs (@DChowdhs) January 18, 2022

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  In her blog posts, Ness has questioned the efficacy and safety of COVID-19 vaccines, asserting that they are associated with reproductive harm.

  Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine have proven controversial because they are not officially authorized by the FDA to treat COVID, but some doctors and prominent public figures have asserted that they work well against the virus.

  The media has also engaged in misinformation surrounding Ivermectin, with the Associated Press having to apologize for falsely claiming that 70 per cent of calls to the Mississippi Poison Control Center were about people ingesting ivermectin to treat COVID-19.

  CNN refused to apologize to Joe Rogan after falsely claiming the podcast host took “horse dewormer,” despite Rogan having been given Ivermectin, a drug routinely used to treat humans, by a licensed doctor.

  “They shouldn’t have said it was horse dewormer,” acknowledged CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta during an appearance on Rogan’s show.

  Last week, Rogan accused CNN of doctoring a video of himself from last year in which the host announced that he had COVID.

  Joe Rogan asks Sanjay Gupta if it bothers him that CNN outright lied about Rogan taking horse dewormer to recover from covid. This is fantastic: pic.twitter.com/PEgJqIXhSD

  — Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) October 14, 2021

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  *  *  *

  Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

  In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Get early access, exclusive content and behinds the scenes stuff by following me on Locals.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/18/2022 – 19:10

• World Anti-Doping Agency Warns Athletes Over Contaminated Chinese Meat Ahead Of Beijing 2022
  World Anti-Doping Agency Warns Athletes Over Contaminated Chinese Meat Ahead Of Beijing 2022

  Authored by Rita Li via The Epoch Times,

  Olympic athletes must “exercise extreme caution” as they eat Chinese meat, which can be contaminated with the prohibited substance clenbuterol, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) warned last week.

  

  A WADA spokesperson said its guidelines for traveling athletes “only to eat at places given the all-clear by event organizers” in countries such as China remained in place, Olympic news website Inside the Games reported.

  It came after the German Anti-Doping Agency alerted its athletes to avoid Chinese meat at all cost and to seek an alternative over possible clenbuterol contamination.

  Concerns over contaminated Chinese meat have existed for decades, although China banned farmers in 1997 from using clenbuterol, also known as “lean meat powder,” to feed livestock such as swine and calves. The illegal food additive was designed to produce leaner meat by speeding up muscle-building and the burning of fat.

  Competitors of the upcoming Games are unlikely to have their meals outside the Athletes’ Village where they could eat such performance-enhancing foods, as Beijing started operating a closed-loop system two weeks ago. Athletes will enter the Olympic bubble upon their arrival or after 21 days in quarantine if not fully vaccinated.

  According to the report, WADA said it was the “responsibility of event organizers and governments to ensure the meat available to athletes is not contaminated,” including at the Village.

  Athletes could test positive in drug tests for “very low levels” of clenbuterol, the spokesperson added.

  Clenbuterol, which was banned by the European Union in 1988 and the United States in 1991, can also cause serious health problems in humans including tremors, nausea, and headaches.

  Yet scandals in the industry led to waves of domestic and foreign skepticism with Chinese authorities’ capacity to properly regulate food safety.

  In March 2011, hundreds of Chinese people became sick from consuming pork contaminated with clenbuterol, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, as some pig farmers continued to illegally use the drug for profit.

  In 2012, China’s General Administration of Sports issued an urgent demand telling Chinese Olympic athletes not to eat meat, over fears that they would consume clenbuterol. The announcement came after Chinese Olympic judo champion Tong Wen was banned for two years for having traces of clenbuterol in her bloodstream.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/18/2022 – 18:30

• US Gov't Probes Alibaba's Cloud Unit For National Security Risks
  US Gov’t Probes Alibaba’s Cloud Unit For National Security Risks

  Reuters reports the U.S. Commerce Department’s Office of Intelligence and Security is reviewing e-commerce giant Alibaba Group’s cloud business to decide whether U.S. citizens’ and businesses’ most sensitive personal information stored on a foreign adversary’s cloud network is a national security risk. 

  Three people briefed on the matter told Reuters the Office of Intelligence and Security launched a probe on how U.S. citizens and companies store personal information and intellectual property abroad and whether the Chinese government could access the cloud to steal the sensitive information. 

  Findings from the probe could eventually influence how personal information and intellectual property are stored abroad. According to one of the sources, there’s the very real possibility that Americans could be prohibited from using the service. 

  Alibaba’s U.S. cloud business is tiny and wouldn’t significantly impact U.S. citizens and companies if there was a ban. The company’s U.S. cloud business only generates $50 million in revenue per year. 

  Concern about Alibaba stemmed from former President Trump. The Office of Intelligence and Security was created under the Trump administration to investigate U.S. firms and the internet, telecom, and tech companies from doing business with foreign adversaries like China and Russia. The office has been concentrated on Chinese cloud providers, said one of the sources, because Beijing’s data theft is a real threat. 

  Months before President Trump left office. He issued a warning against Chinese cloud providers “to prevent U.S. citizens’ most sensitive personal information and our businesses’ most valuable intellectual property…from being stored and processed on cloud-based systems accessible to our foreign adversaries.”

  Alibaba’s US ADR shares slid Tuesday morning on a combination of the Reuters’ report and a jump in Treasury yields.

  

  Tech tensions between the U.S. and China have been ongoing as both superpowers are on a course for a ‘soft’ technological decoupling. 

  In recent years, Washington has raised many concerns about China’s technological advancements and has deemed it a national security risk. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/18/2022 – 18:10

• Experts Are Warning That Empty Shelves And Food Shortages Are Going To Continue For Many Weeks To Come
  Experts Are Warning That Empty Shelves And Food Shortages Are Going To Continue For Many Weeks To Come

  Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse,

  The term “return to normal” is being thrown around a lot these days, but will things ever truly return to the way that they were before the pandemic came along?  I don’t think so. 

  

  From an economic standpoint, an extraordinary amount of lasting damage has been done over the past two years.  A seemingly endless list of major problems has thrown thousands upon thousands of critical supply chains into a complete and utter state of chaos, and this has resulted in some very painful shortages.  For quite a while, the mainstream media kept insisting that the shortages would soon be gone, but now they are being forced to admit the truth.  If you can believe it, NPR has even published a major story about the growing shortages in this country…

  No, you’re not imagining it. Some grocery store shelves are bare again, conjuring bad memories of spring 2020 for many.

  Social media is rife with images of empty supermarket aisles and signs explaining the lack of available food and other items. Stores such as Aldi have apologized to customers for the shortages.

  Nobody in the mainstream media ever imagined that the shortages would last this long.

  For certain items such as computer chips, the duration of the shortages is now approaching two full years.

  Of course fear of Omicron has made things even worse, and one expert interviewed by NPR suggested that supermarkets in the U.S. are now facing a “perfect storm”…

  “We’re really seeing the perfect storm,” Phil Lempert, editor of the website SupermarketGuru.com, told NPR.

  Isn’t it strange how that term just seems to keep popping up all over the place?

  One of the major issues that supermarkets on the east coast are currently facing is greatly increased shipping costs.

  Many Americans don’t realize this, but much of the fresh produce that we enjoy is actually grown in a handful of western states.  In fact, “99 percent of walnuts, 97 percent of kiwis, 97 percent of plums, 95 percent of celery, 95 percent of garlic, 89 percent of cauliflower, 71 percent of spinach, and 69 percent of carrots” grown in the United States come from the state of California.  To get all of that produce to stores in the east has always been a major production, but today it has also become exceedingly expensive…

  Growers of perishable produce across the West Coast are paying nearly triple pre-pandemic trucking rates to ship things like lettuce and berries before they spoil. Shay Myers, CEO of Owyhee Produce, which grows onions, watermelons and asparagus along the border of Idaho and Oregon, said he has been holding off shipping onions to retail distributors until freight costs go down.

  Myers said transportation disruptions in the last three weeks, caused by a lack of truck drivers and recent highway-blocking storms, have led to a doubling of freight costs for fruit and vegetable producers, on top of already-elevated pandemic prices. “We typically will ship, East Coast to West Coast – we used to do it for about $7,000,” he said. “Today it’s somewhere between $18,000 and $22,000.”

  Unfortunately, the issues that are plaguing the industry are not going to be cleared up any time soon.

  According to the CEO of Conagra Brands, supply chain issues will continue to be a huge headache for his company for at least the next month…

  Birds Eye frozen vegetables maker Conagra Brands’ CEO Sean Connolly told investors last week that supplies from its U.S. plants could be constrained for at least the next month due to Omicron-related absences.

  And the CEO of Albertson’s is anticipating continued supply chain woes “over the next four to six weeks”…

  Vivek Sankaran, CEO of the grocery store chain Albertson’s, said in an earnings call that the company had been hoping to recover from recent supply issues but omicron “put a dent in that.”

  “There are more supply challenges, and we would expect more supply challenges over the next four to six weeks,” Sankaran said on Tuesday.

  Of course these corporate leaders are anticipating that the Omicron wave will eventually fade and operations will start getting back to normal as warmer weather comes along.

  But in order to do that, they are going to have to find a lot more workers from somewhere.

  According to another industry expert, the consumer-packaged goods industry in the United States “is missing around 120,000 workers” right now…

  The situation is not expected to abate for at least a few more weeks, Katie Denis, vice president of communications and research at the Consumer Brands Association said, blaming the shortages on a scarcity of labor.

  The consumer-packaged goods industry is missing around 120,000 workers out of which only 1,500 jobs were added last month, she said, while the National Grocer’s Association said that many of its grocery store members were operating with less than 50% of their workforce capacity.

  So where are they going to find enough people to restore service to normal levels?

  They can’t exactly resurrect those that have died over the past year.

  Now that millions of workers have seemingly “disappeared” from the system, companies all over America are fiercely competing with one another for anyone that still has a pulse and is available.

  So if the food industry wants to hire thousands upon thousands of new workers, they are going to have to radically raise wages.

  And if they do that, we will be paying even more to fill up our carts at the grocery store.

  Today, a full shopping cart full of food can run more than 300 dollars in many areas.

  Will that figure soon reach 400 or 500 dollars?

  And what happens if our supply chain problems persist for many months to come like analysts at Deutsche Bank are now projecting…

  ‘For 2022, we expect supply pressures to likely linger for longer, perhaps until the second half of next year before gradually unwinding,’ Deutsche Bank analysts wrote in a note last Tuesday.

  But just like everyone else, the analysts at Deutsche Bank are also assuming that conditions will “return to normal” eventually.

  It would be really nice if that actually happened, but as Wolf Richter has pointed out, grocery stores have desperately been trying to “return to normal” for 20 months…

  Grocery stores have been trying to stock up for 20 months now, to fill the holes and catch up with this historic surge in demand, but every time they make a little headway, new constraints and problems emerge, and they still don’t have enough inventory on hand to get over the hump, and they temporarily and sporadically run out of some items.

  The elephant in the room that nobody really wants to talk about is the fact that our supply chains will never fully return to the way they were in 2019.

  Too much has changed.

  Yes, there will be a lot of ups and downs, but I actually believe that many of the problems that we are facing today will actually grow over time.

  It took decades of incredibly bad decisions to get us to this point, and the gross incompetence being displayed by our leaders in Washington does not give me confidence that things will turn around any time soon.

  The years ahead are not going to be pretty, and I would advise you to prepare accordingly.

  *  *  *

  It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 01/18/2022 – 17:50

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• Dr. Peter McCullough: Official COVID "Narrative Has Crumbled"
  Dr. Peter McCullough: Official COVID “Narrative Has Crumbled”

  Authored by Art Moore via WND.com,

  Dr. Peter McCullough – a renowned cardiologist and highly published medical scientist whose confrontation of the government’s COVID-19 policies has drawn more than 40 million views on Joe Rogan’s podcast – told WND in a video interview Thursday night the official pandemic narrative that has been fiercely guarded by establishment media and social-media censors is “completely crumbling.”

  

  That narrative, he said, included “false statements regarding asymptomatic spread, reliance on lockdown and masks – which obviously didn’t work – the suppression of early treatment, the mass promotion of vaccines that failed.”

  “And now here we are, almost in complete free fall,” McCullough said, referring to the record number of COVID-19 cases as officials acknowledge the vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission.

  McCullough noted that in California, with the more contagious but much milder omicron variant now dominant, health care workers who tested positive for COVID-19 and had symptoms were told to go back to work.

  “With that, I think that’s it. I think that’s the end. The narrative has crumbled. People don’t want these vaccines,” McCullough said.

  “The vaccines should be pulled off the market. They clearly are not solving the problem.”

  The focus, he said, should be on “treating high-risk patients who develop symptoms” with some of the early treatments that he and other physicians around the world have found to be effective, including ivermectin and a new drug granted emergency use authorization by the FDA, Paxlovid.

  McCullough cited a study from Denmark and data from the U.K.’s health agency showing that the vaccines have zero effectiveness against omicron.

  Completing this poll entitles you to WND news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

  “That’s not misinformation,” he said. “I’m just quoting the data. All of this can be looked up. Fact-checkers can look at it. I know I’ll never have any problems with allegations of misinformation, because I just quote the data.”

  President Biden clearly had McCullough in mind when on Thursday he urged social media companies and media outlets to “please deal with the misinformation and disinformation that’s on your shows. It has to stop.”

  McCullough pointed out his work has been relied upon by courts across the nation, including the U.S. Supreme Court, and he has testified to the U.S. Senate and will be back there later this month.

  “I think America knows who is giving them the straight story.”

  In the half-hour video interview with WND (embedded below), McCullough also discussed:

  • The punishment of physicians who counter the official COVID narrative and use clinically indicated, FDA-approved drugs off-label such as ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients, including a colleague in Maine whose was ordered to undergo a psychological examination after her license was suspended;

  • His participation in a rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 23 protesting vaccine mandates;

  • The Supreme Court’s rulings Thursday on vaccine mandates;

  • The possibility that omicron could spell the end of the pandemic, serving as a “universal booster”;

  • Data showing that vaccination has backfired, making the pandemic worse in nations with high vaccine intake;

  • The lethality of the mRNA vaccines;

  • His view on Biden’s mass testing program;

  • His take on new FDA-approved treatments and his simple, inexpensive, over-the-counter protocol for treating omicron;

  • The unwillingness of so many doctors to “come off the sidelines” and treat patients for COVID-19;

  • The “crisis of competence” among top government health officials;

  • Where to find resources and support for physicians and patients, and for employees confronting mandates.

  “I think Americans are going to understand that their individual choice is really what’s going to matter in the end,” he McCullough told WND in conclusion. “If Americans decide that they’re not going to take any boosters or any more vaccines, it doesn’t matter how many mandates or how many court decisions that happen. The vaccine program is going to crumble. I think it’s just a matter of saying no.”

  He emphasized that the vaccines are still “research.”

  “No one can be forced into it,” he said of vaccination. “And they’re not turning out to be safe or effective. So, if  everybody just stands firm and declines the vaccines, I think that will be the quickest way for us to get out of this.”

  See the WND interview with Dr. Peter McCullough:

  McCullough, in a video interview with WND in December, called for a “pivot” from the current policies to early treatment and “compassionate care” for those who have COVID or have suffered vaccine injuries, which have included myocarditis, neurological issues and blood clotting.

  “Now is the time for doctors to step up. Now is not a time for rhetoric or harsh statements regarding scientific discourse,” he said.

  Many of McCullough’s 600 peer-reviewed publications have appeared in top-tier journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association and The Lancet. He testified to the U.S. Senate in November 2020 against what he described as the federal government’s politicization of health care during the pandemic, curbing or blocking the availability of cheap, effective treatments. In a speech in September, he told of having been stripped of the editorship of a Swiss-based journal after having lost his position with a major health system, “with no explanation and no due process.” Baylor University Medical Center fired him in February. And Texas A&M College of Medicine, Texas Christian University and University of North Texas Health Science Center School of Medicine have cut ties with McCullough, accusing him of spreading misinformation.

  “I’ve been stripped of every title that I’ve ever had in that institution. I’ve received a threat letter from the American College of Physicians, [and] a threat letter from the American Board,” he said in September.

  All because of his “lawful” participation “in a topic of public importance.”

  He said there are “powerful forces at work, far more powerful than we can possibly think of, that are influencing anybody who is in a position of authority.”

  McCullough is the chief medical adviser for the Truth for Health Foundation, a physician-founded charity that says it is “dedicated to following the Oath of Hippocrates to serve individual patients to the best of our ability and judgement and to uphold the highest standards of medical ethics.”

  *  *  *

  Last year, America’s doctors, nurses and paramedics were celebrated as frontline heroes battling a fearsome new pandemic. Today, under Joe Biden, tens of thousands of these same heroes are denounced as rebels, conspiracy theorists, extremists and potential terrorists. Along with massive numbers of police, firemen, Border Patrol agents, Navy SEALs, pilots, air-traffic controllers, and countless other truly essential Americans, they’re all considered so dangerous as to merit termination, their professional and personal lives turned upside down due to their decision not to be injected with the experimental COVID vaccines. Biden’s tyrannical mandate threatens to cripple American society – from law enforcement to airlines to commercial supply chains to hospitals. It’s already happening. But the good news is that huge numbers of “yesterday’s heroes” are now fighting back – bravely and boldly. The whole epic showdown is laid out as never before in the sensational October issue of WND’s monthly Whistleblower magazine, titled “THE GREAT AMERICAN REBELLION: ‘We will not comply!’ COVID-19 power grab ignites bold new era of national defiance.”

  SUPPORT TRUTHFUL JOURNALISM. MAKE A DONATION TO THE NONPROFIT WND NEWS CENTER. THANK YOU!

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/17/2022 – 23:50

• China Coal Production Hits Record To Avoid Energy Crisis
  China Coal Production Hits Record To Avoid Energy Crisis

  Many of us in the Western world are spending the most ever on electricity bills, forced to eat fake meat, and paying a lot more in taxes for green initiatives. At the same time, China ignores the green revolution by ramping up record coal production in December. 

  China, the world’s biggest polluter and consumer of coal, produced a record 384.67-million tons of the dirtiest fossil fuel last month, up 7.2% YoY compared with the same month a year ago. The month prior, production was up nearly 14 million tons. For the full year, output reached 4.07 billion tons, up 4.7% over the previous year. 

  CHART OF THE DAY: The spectacular (and depressing) surge in Chinese coal production in Nov-Dec 2021, hitting an all-time high of 384 million tonnes last month. That has kept the lights in China on, at the expense of lots more CO2 | #China #ClimateCrisis #coal pic.twitter.com/IWbbwmL6bV

  — Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) January 17, 2022

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  While Chinese President Xi Jinping skipped out on the Group of 20 summit and United Nations climate conference in late 2021, many Western powers agreed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by the end of this decade and reach carbon neutrality by 2050. It wasn’t a mistake that China didn’t show up to the conference because they were too busy panic hoarding coal and other fossil fuels ahead of the Northern Hemisphere winter to avoid an energy crisis. Beijing ordered state-owned energy companies to secure fossil fuel supplies at any costs in early October. 

  The move to panic hoard sent thermal coal futures contracts on the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange to a record high of 2,309 yuan per ton on Oct. 18. By the end of the month, regulators imposed price caps on miners and ordered more production. Prices plunged 69% from 2,309 to 712 today due to the market intervention by the government as coal inventories for utilities surpassed 162 million tons, or about 21 days usage, about 40 million more tons than the same period last year. 

  

  One can forget Beijing’s diplomatic pledges to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and carbon neutrality in the coming decades — it simply won’t happen any time this soon as their calls to go green is just hot air. 

  Fossil fuels aren’t going anywhere. The process to manufacture iPhones to televisions to laptops is very energy-intensive and powered by coal. 

  If you want to know the actual cost of the world going green over the next three decades, well, it’s between $100 and $150 trillion. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/17/2022 – 23:20

• Make Preparations! Canadian Cross Border Trucking Vaxx Mandate Now In Effect, Domestic Trucking Mandate Starts Next Week
  Make Preparations! Canadian Cross Border Trucking Vaxx Mandate Now In Effect, Domestic Trucking Mandate Starts Next Week

  Authored by ‘Sundance’ via TheConservativeTreehouse.com,

  The cross border vaccine mandate for truckers in/out of Canada is now in effect.  The U.S. vaccine mandate takes effect on January 22nd.

  

  It will take a few days to see the consequences, but there will be consequences.

  Keep in mind, any impact is taking place in a supply chain system that is already tenuous and unstable at best.  A small disruption that may have been minimally significant against a fully operational supply chain, is more likely to be a much bigger disruption in a supply chain that is already under a severe amount of demand side stress.  Somewhere in the range of 16,000 to 38,000 daily loads are likely to be impacted.

  When questioned about this, Canadian Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic Leblanc says the trucking industry “has had adequate time to prepare for this.”  Keep in mind, the mandate was announced 45 days ago (November 30th).  According to the Canadian government, changing the structural rules for all the logistics and commerce in cross border shipping, 45 days is enough notice.  

  WATCH:

  CANADA – […] “I think you probably won’t see that movement … that the government’s looking for,” retail expert Bruce Winder told CTV News Channel on Saturday when asked if the effort will encourage truckers to get vaccinated.

  […]  The mandate throws a “major wrench” in the Canadian and North American supply chains, he added, with grocers, food producers, the auto parts industry and building materials among the sectors expected to be most affected.

  “I really hope that we’re not at the stage where you see food insecurity, where you’re actually going to grocery stores and there’s nothing on the shelf,” Winder said.  “That could be the worst-case scenario.”

  Mike Millian, president of the Private Motor Truck Council of Canada, told CTV News Channel on Saturday that there were as many 23,000 vacancies at the end of the third quarter of 2021, with his group’s own studies showing that roughly 20 per cent of Canadian truck drivers operating across the border are unvaccinated.

  […] “If we remove a fifth of that workforce, we’re going to see shortages on shelves and we’re going to see inflation of prices, because the cost to bring this stuff here is going to go up.”  (read more)

  The truth is no one knows how bad the disruption will be.  What we do know is that there will be disruption, and there is no infrastructure for a level of rig-switching at the border crossing region that could accommodate changing rigs, drop-offs and/or pick-ups or driver transfers on the scale that is being discussed.   The logistics here are a total mess.

  We have a friend who drives for a trucking company. They have 10 drivers who go in to Canada, he is one. Company told them – you all must be vaxx’d. Seven (7) refusing… company now has 3 drivers (for Canada).

  — Cuprum Dea 🍊 Andy Beshear – Kentucky Tyrant (@CuprumDea) January 16, 2022

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  Friday was my last trip and contribution to the economy also.
  Skippy, you woke a sleeping giant.🤬 pic.twitter.com/C9v4FyGdTm

  — 🇨🇦🌟 Fed up Canuck 🌟🇨🇦❤️🇺🇸 (@TonyErb3) January 16, 2022

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  A concerned Canadian Truck Driver… you should listen cause it effects America too pic.twitter.com/TMaCzNFjnY

  — FiestyQgrl ~ Run To Your Goal (@FQgrl) January 17, 2022

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  I don’t know who you talked to that gave you that information, but it’s logistically impossible to sustain. I’ve worked booking trucks across the border for 5yrs and it is significantly affected everyone involved. Many companies will go under if this is not reversed.

  — Gordolover 🇵🇱 (@olea8) January 16, 2022

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  there is no room for it. The I-81 crossing at the St. Lawrence is near my home. You can’t cross drop a load and then pick up there. Ever seen Windsor/Detroit? No way to do that there. How about the Rainbow bridge at the Falls? Nope, no room there.

  — The Retiree ⛳🏌️‍♀️🎸🎹🇺🇸 (@BillSpies1) January 16, 2022

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  Keep your fingers crossed, but prepare for FUBAR.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/17/2022 – 22:50

• Iran & Saudis Preparing To Reopen Embassies After Decade Of Regional Proxy War
  Iran & Saudis Preparing To Reopen Embassies After Decade Of Regional Proxy War

  In a highly unexpected and unusual development, and coming off a possible diplomatic breakthrough amid recent talks aimed at opening up relations, Iranian diplomats arrived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia this weekend for the first time in a half-decade. The two countries haven’t had diplomatic relations since 2016, when Iranian protesters attacked the Saudi Embassy in Tehran following the kingdom’s execution of a popular Shia cleric. They are reportedly preparing to reopen embassies.

  The Saudis and Iranians have further been waging fierce proxy wars against the other in places like Syria and Yemen over a period of years. Shia Iran has long funded and sent weapons primarily to Hezbollah, as well as Yemen’s Houthi rebels, while the Saudis have funded Sunni jihadists including ISIS. The two sides have also long vied for influence in Lebanon’s politics, with Washington consistently backing the Saudis.

  “Saeed Khatibzadeh, the spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, told reporters that Iran is focusing for now on reopening its offices in OIC with three diplomats. Iran has long said it’s ready to reopen its embassy in Riyadh,” the Associated Press reports Monday, in reference to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. “In recent months, neighboring Iraq has hosted talks between the two Arab nations aimed at normalizing ties.” The OIC has 57 member nations and is based in Riyadh, and is focused on economic cooperation and political solidarity on Islam-related issues. 

  

  Iran cautioned that it will only pursue the formal reestablishment of relations if Riyadh is prepared to also take “practical steps” in this direction, according to a statement by the foreign ministry’s Khatibzadeh.

  “It depends on what practical measures the Saudi side will take,” he said, Monday, stressing that Tehran itself taking great strides. The Iranian spokesman further called the diplomats’ visit “a good prelude for the two sides to send delegations to visit their embassies.”

  But as the Associated Press underscores, a number of pressing problems and disagreements remain between the two: “Saudi Arabia is also concerned about Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missiles programs. Iran says the nuclear program has peaceful purposes and its missile program is merely defensive.”

  Going back at least two years, the Saudis have also pointed the finger at Iran for allegedly supplying Shia rebels in Yemen with missiles capable of reaching deep into Saudi territory. In recent months, sporadic ground-launched missiles from the Houthis have targeted Saudi airports.

  Given these significant steps and signs of growing rapprochement, further positive breakthroughs in this direction would have huge reverberations throughout the region, potentially helping to stabilize still smoldering conflict zones in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

  #Iran FM spokesman (on Iran-Saudi talks): The focus is on launching Iran’s OIC representation in Jeddah…As president Raisi had earlier noted, Iran is ready to reopen embassy in #SaudiArabia & that depends on Saudi side. We’ll consider all arrangements for this to be implemented pic.twitter.com/aVVmuoLTcq

  — Abas Aslani (@AbasAslani) January 17, 2022

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  It appears that after a decade of war, particularly focused in Syria, Tehran and Riyadh are seeking to draw down the intensity of the proxy wars, with currently the Yemen conflict still being the most intense one in the region.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/17/2022 – 22:20

• The "Myth Of Bipartisanship": Kyrsten Sinema Becomes The Latest Victim Of Rage Politics
  The “Myth Of Bipartisanship”: Kyrsten Sinema Becomes The Latest Victim Of Rage Politics

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  Below is my column in the Hill on the Democratic members and groups attacking Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) after she repeated her support for the filibuster rule. The reaction to her floor speech reveals the depth of the addiction to rage in our body politic.  It is the same license that we saw this weekend in Florida when Florida agriculture commissioner and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Nikki Fried compared the support of Gov. Ron DeSantis to the rise of “Hitler.” It is not enough to disagree. You have to compare your opponent to a genocidal murderer. It seems that we cannot discuss even agriculture policies without raising Anschluss in the age of rage.  Many of us criticize former President Trump for his personal attacks and attacks on the press, but many of those same voices are now denouncing others, like Sinema, as enemies of democracy and the people. Sinema is a case study in rage politics.

  

  Here is the column:

  In Shakespeare’s “Othello,” the character Iago famously declared that “men in rage strike those that wish them best.” It was a warning that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) now understands all too well. Both Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) have refused to be bullied into changing the filibuster rule — a rule that forces the parties into dialogue and compromise.

  Sinema supports the voting rights legislation but sees this move as endangering any chance of national healing and resolution. She stated on the Senate floor that “we have but one democracy. We can only survive, we can only keep her, if we do so together.” That deeply felt speech was met with vile, threatening attacks. It appears that, in a nation addicted to rage, even those seeking an intervention can become the casualties of our political distemper.

  Sinema offered the same arguments long used to support the filibuster — indeed, the same arguments made by President Biden until this week. Biden once called earlier efforts to change the filibuster “disastrous” for democracy and proclaimed, “God save us from that fate. … [It] would change this fundamental understanding and unbroken practice of what the Senate is all about.” Others joined him then in demanding that Senate Republicans preserve the rule in the name of democracy itself, including then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who insisted that abandoning the rule would be “doomsday for Democracy” and reduce the United States to a “banana Republic.”

  All of those speeches were celebrated back then in the media and by Democrats as powerful and poignant.

  Yet that is the liberating quality of rage: It is pure and absolute without the burden of reason or recognition. Liberal commentators this week went after Sinema with sputtering, blind fury, many mocking that she became emotional as she described the anger and divisions in the country.

  MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell wrote, “Sinema delivers the Senate’s stupidest speech by a Democrat in an edge-of-tears voice to give childish words a melodramatic effect.”

  Onetime MSNBC host Keith Olbermann tweeted that Sinema “needs to resign or be removed from office immediately. … [She] has become a menace to the continuation of American democracy.”

  MSNBC’s Malcolm Nance went further and said Sinema’s staff should “resign at the shame of being handmaidens to the death of Democracy.”

  Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, who previously called for burning down the Republican Party, tweeted, “Sinema is effectively asking the authors of Jim Crow and vote-rigging to give their permission for her to stop it. This is worse than incoherent or cowardice. It’s a moral disgrace. Ask the segregationists for permission to vote for Civil Rights Act?”

  So, senators voicing the same position recently held by Democrats such as Biden, Obama and Schumer are now “segregationists”?

  The “Jim Crow on steroids” reference to the Georgia election law was voiced by Biden, who has now yielded entirely to rage politics. He recently pledged to do “whatever it takes” to pass the legislation, and his solution was to go full blind rage in Atlanta by accusing anyone voting for the filibuster as siding with segregationists and seeking the destruction of democracy. The next day, Biden unleashed a tirade denouncing half of the Senate of seeking to establish autocracy through voter suppression.

  The president, who once insisted he would be the nation’s unifier, has discovered the license of rage politics — the same license shown by those who chased Sinema into a bathroom last year. Likewise, after Sinema’s floor speech, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) staffer Sarah Michelsen was thrilled to see Sinema close to tears and encouraged activists to “keep going” with the attacks because they are “breaking her.”

  It is the same license to hate and harass that was shown by ACLU lawyer Samuel Crankshaw, who opposed high schooler Nicholas Sandmann being accepted into college even after he was shown to have been falsely accused of harassing a Native American activist in front of the Lincoln Memorial. It is the license that recently led a Los Angeles Times columnist to defend mocking the deaths of unvaccinated people.

  Some Democrats were quick to promise that Sinema had just ended her career; CNN’s Joe Lockhart wrote, “Probably more accurate to refer to her as former Senator Sinema.” Her speech was, in that sense, reminiscent of another courageous senator, Edmund Ross of Kansas, one of seven Republicans who voted to acquit then-President Andrew Johnson in 1868. He described his fateful vote as “literally [looking] down into my open grave.”

  Ross is celebrated as a “profile of courage” for taking such a stand despite the anger of his own party.

  So, too, was Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) when he voted to convict then-President Trump in his second impeachment trial; liberal commentators showered him with praise. In 2020, Stephen Colbert heralded Romney as “a ray of hope” who spoke the truth and was “willing to put up with whatever the blowback for this decision is.”

  O’Donnell tweeted that “each day for the rest of his life [Lindsey Graham] will live in enraged jealousy of [Romney’s] courage.” While Romney also got emotional on the floor, O’Donnell did not mock him for his “edge-of-tears voice to give childish words a melodramatic effect.”

  Schumer went public to “salute” Romney: “The pressure on every Republican was enormous. … The fact that this is bipartisan holds up a beacon to what was right and what was wrong.”

  Yet, according to the Liberal pundits, Sinema is no Romney. She had the audacity to stand on principle rather than politics. It is widely believed that other Democratic senators share her discomfort with changing the filibuster, but, thus far, they have not summoned the same courage to face such withering criticism. As I wrote last year, such integrity is rarely rewarded by one’s own party: “Ross, like Romney, jumped — to the applause of opposing party. In the Senate, self-sacrifice remains an act best admired from a distance.”

  Sinema’s speech was denounced by those who insist that bipartisanship is a “myth” in the age of rage. She is, according to MSNBC’s Nina Turner, a “soulless coward” for seeking common ground and compromise. She is hated precisely because she did not hate enough. She did not hate Republicans so blindly as to declare them modern Bull Connors like Biden did or to call the filibuster “a relic of Jim Crow.”

  In the age of rage, civility is repulsive and intolerable. Sinema made herself a reference point that exposed how unhinged many of her fellow Democrats have become. Remove that reference point, and only rage remains.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/17/2022 – 21:55

• US Condemns 4th North Korean Ballistic Missile Test In A Month
  US Condemns 4th North Korean Ballistic Missile Test In A Month

  It’s been confirmed that early Monday morning North Korea launched a pair of ballistic missiles which fell into the Sea of Japan. Crucially this marked the fourth major weapons launch in less than a month, after last week Pyongyang claimed to have conducted successful hypersonic missile tests.

  The DPRK’s state media described that the latest test was of short-range ballistic missiles of (SRBMs) of the KN24 type which “accurately” hit their designated targets in the Sea of Japan, at a distance of about 380km and reaching Mach 5.

  

  A State Department statement issued soon after Monday’s test said the United States “condemns the DPRK’s ballistic missile launches,” given the ratcheting frequency of the launches, in a signal Kim Jong Un is expanding his arsenal, while rebuffing the idea of any level of communication with Washington and the UN.

  “These launches are in violation of multiple U.N. Security Council Resolutions and pose a threat to the DPRK’s neighbors and the international community. We remain committed to a diplomatic approach to the DPRK and call on them to engage in dialogue,” the US statement said.

  Monday’s US statement emphasized a commitment to protect Japan as well:

  The statement reiterated the U.S.’s “ironclad” commitment to help defend Japan and South Korea.

  Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida instructed his government to do its utmost to gather information about the launch and ensure the safety of vessels and aircraft. Japan’s Coast Guard issued a warning for vessels traveling around Japanese waters to watch out for falling objects, but no immediate damage was reported. 

  To kick off January, the North had said it conducted hypersonic glide vehicle tests on Jan.5 and Jan.11, which grabbed international headlines and got the Pentagon’s attention.

  North Korea fired two suspected short-range ballistic missiles from an airport in its capital city of Pyongyang, South Korea’s military reported, the fourth test this month to demonstrate its expanding missile arsenal https://t.co/yTjaMXSyPV pic.twitter.com/SAqYSC7UhG

  — Reuters (@Reuters) January 17, 2022

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  That last Tuesday test is believed to have involved a missile that reached Mach 10, alarming intelligence agencies in the West, and which even briefly resulted in an FAA order to ground commercial flights on the US West coast (for an estimated five to seven minutes).

  Importantly, this latest test marks at least seven ballistic missile tests since September 2021, which the US says is a violation of multiple United Nations Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs).

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/17/2022 – 21:30

• China's Property Sector Is Crashing Again And This Time It Has Reached The Country's Biggest Developer
  China’s Property Sector Is Crashing Again And This Time It Has Reached The Country’s Biggest Developer

  The crisis engulfing China’s property sector – which has prompted Beijing to capitulate on its tightening ambitions yet again, and forced China to launch an increasingly more aggressive easing campaign, which so far culminated in the first rate cut in Chinese official rates in almost two years – has impacted the country’s biggest developer, sending the shares and bonds of Country Garden Holdings – which is even bigger than Evergrande – plunging amid fears that a reportedly failed fundraising effort may be a harbinger of waning confidence.

  Country Garden is one of the few remaining large, (arguably) better-quality private developers that had been largely unscathed by the liquidity crunch, even as peers such as Shimao Group Holdings – a recently investment grade developer whose collapse in December was viewed as “more devastating than debt crises at Evergrande and Kaisa” – dramatic reversals in their credit ratings.

  At least until now… and now that Shimao has imploded, Country Garden remains perhaps the final and most visible bellwether for contagion risk, as unprecedented levels of stress in the offshore credit market threaten to drag good credits down with bad.

  Since taking the top spot from China Evergrande Group in 2017, Country Garden has remained the nation’s largest developer in China by contracted sales. It employs more than 200,000 people.

  Headquartered in the southern city of Foshan in Guangdong province, the firm – like China Evergrande Group – has focused in recent years on building housing developments in lower-tier cities. 

  And, like Evergrande, Country Garden has also relied heavily on access to funding in the offshore credit market; actually not just Evegrande but virtually all developer peers that binged on debt to fuel growth in the past decade only to see the window slam shut now. According to Bloomberg, it has the largest pool of outstanding US dollar bonds among China’s biggest property firms, excluding defaulters, with some US$11.7 billion outstanding, Bloomberg-compiled data showed.

  Founding chairman Yeung Kwok Keung transferred his controlling stake to his daughter Yang Huiyan in 2005. She is now the firm’s vice-chairman and is the richest woman in China, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.

  Or at least she was, because on some of Country Garden’s US dollar notes plunged to record lows in the wake of a report that the firm failed to win sufficient investor support for a possible convertible bond deal. Longer-dated bonds were trading as low as 69 cents on the dollar as of late Friday.

  

  This is notable because China’s developer was relatively resilient in the face of the liquidity crisis sparked by a government crackdown on excessive borrowing by builders and housing market speculation, and had been unscathed by the crisis at industry giant Evergrande. But just as we warned back in September, China’s slow-motion real estate crisis which revolves around what Goldman calculated last year was the world’s largest asset which absent significant stimulus from Beijing, is facing a very painful derating.

  

  According to Bloomberg, while Country Garden is not facing imminent repayment pressure – it has US$1.1 billion of dollar bonds due this year and had 186 billion yuan (S$39.5 billion) of available cash as of June last year – risks may emerge if it is seen to have limited access to funding. Any sign of doubt in the firm’s capacity to weather liquidity stress risks may prompt a widespread repricing of other higher-quality developers. With more than 3,000 housing projects located in almost every province in China, Country Garden’s financial health has immense economic and social consequences, far greater than Evergrande.

  Worse, if the firm starts showing signs of stress, it will severely damage already fragile investor and homebuyer confidence, posing threats to China’s economy and even social stability. And that’s when China’s Lehman moment will truly emerge.

  Where it gets challenging is that similar to Evergrande, more than 60% of Country Garden’s contracted sales in mainland China came from the third- and fourth-tier cities, said its 2021 interim report. Demand in lower-tier areas may significantly weaken in 2022, said a forecast by Fitch analysts. Being a “pure developer”, it is less flexible when it comes to raising cash by selling assets, said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Andrew Chan.

  Country Garden’s strategy is to manage its current assets effectively, in addition to expanding its business, the told Bloomberg News, although it clearly did not anticipate the recent meltdown in its bonds. “The firm is experiencing less volatility than the overall market” amid a broader market downturn, it said. The developer sold bonds and asset-backed securities in the local market in December, reflecting support from both investors and regulators, and maintained its ratings at all 3 major rating firms last year, said the comments.

  Country Garden holds both investment-grade and high-yield credit ratings from the 3 major risk assessors, making it a so-called crossover name that could be vulnerable to becoming a ‘fallen angel’. That could in turn raise its borrowing costs and eliminate yet another builder from the dwindling pool of higher-rated developers that investors can turn to during the credit squeeze.

  It has the equivalent of an investment-grade triple B rating at both Moody’s Investor Services and Fitch Ratings, and the highest possible speculative-grade rating at S&P Global Ratings. Still, the borrower is likely to “strengthen its financial resilience by controlling debt growth and maintaining disciplined land acquisitions”, S&P analysts wrote in a September report that reaffirmed its rating.

  Still, the builder may find it difficult to revive sales in 2022 with weakening market sentiment in lower-tier cities, where 77 per cent of its land bank is located, said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Kristy Hung. The firm’s sizeable amount of newly acquired land continues to be located in such areas, raising further concern about cash collection, she wrote.

  Meanwhile, in the latest wave of selling, investors are now scrutinizing Country Garden’s capacity to raise funding from a variety of channels, particularly as the offshore credit market remains effectively closed to most developers. It needs to repay or refinance some US$1.3 billion on bonds this year, the majority of which are dollar notes. Its next maturity is a US$425 million bond due Jan 27.

  The selling in Country Garden’s bond accelerated last week after the company struggled to tap the market for fresh funds, reportedly pulling a $300 million convertible bond issue due to weak demand. At the same time, Sunac’s shares sank a record 23% after it sold new equity. Focus has also turned to the spillover effects of Country Garden’s falling bond prices on the notes of other stronger developers as fears of contagion risks remain elevated.

  Just to shore up confidence that it won’t be the next Evergradnde, a statement on the Hong Kong stock exchange late Monday said  that Country Garden bought back an aggregate principal amount of $5m of 4.75% notes due July 2022 and $5m of 7.25% notes due April 2026. And even though the company added that it would monitor market conditions and “may make further repurchase of its bonds”, we are concerned that this tiny, theatrical $10MM buyback will do little to restore investor confidence.

  And as investors nervously eye the fate of China’s largest developer, fresh turmoil rocked Chinese property bonds on Monday on concern over the true scale of the industry’s hidden debts according to Bloomberg, deepening a selloff among higher-rated firms.

  The latest selloff was catalyzed by a Debtwire report according to which Logan Group could be on the hook for $812 million of guarantees on outstanding obligations due through 2023. The news hammered Logan’s note due 2023 which sank 14.1 cents to a record low 62.9 while Country Garden’s shorter-dated bond due 2024 tumbled 12.9 cents to 67.7 cents, extending last week’s selloff for the country’s biggest developer.

  According to Bloomberg, the selling in Property stocks is morphing from one catalyzed by specific event to one sparked by mounting concerns about the transparency of China’s better developers, and is forcing bondholders to question the liquidity of firms whose finances appear sound. More debt would mean more creditors, some of whom could demand early repayment. There’s also the risk that hidden liabilities like trust loans, private bonds or high-yield consumer products receive preferential treatment over money owed to offshore creditors. China Evergrande Group, Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd. and Shimao Group Holdings Ltd. have all faced such obligations.

  While Logan, whose bonds traded at close to par as recently as last month, and which rated the equivalent of a BB rating at all three major credit risk assessors, denied both the report and market speculation the company has privately sold debt, that did little to ease the puke in its bonds which quickly spilled over to the rest of the property segment.

  

  Already fragile investor confidence has taken a battering this year, effectively keeping the dollar bond market shut for developers. That’s left the sector with limited refinancing options, increasing the risk of companies failing to pay debt on time.

  “Risks across the Chinese property sector are rising, evident from difficult refinancing conditions for even the most well-regarded firms,” said Wei Liang Chang, a macro strategist at DBS Bank Ltd. Greater clarity on the disclosure of liabilities as well as asset sales are crucial to shore up confidence, he added.

  Real estate financing received by developers plunged about 19% in December from a year earlier, the sharpest decline in more than seven years, according to Bloomberg calculations based on full-year government figures released Monday. Home sales by value declined 19.6% in December from a year earlier, a sixth consecutive monthly drop, while property investment shrank 14%.

  According to Bloomberg calculations, at least seven developers have defaulted on dollar bonds since October. That includes Evergrande, whose crisis has ensnared lender China Minsheng Banking, the world’s worst-performing bank stock. Guangzhou R&F Properties Co. was downgraded to restricted default by Fitch Ratings last week due to what the ratings firm called a distressed debt exchange.

  As if that wasn’t enough, there remains the problem of the frozen bond market. With bond yields of property developers at stratospheric levels, Chinese property firms need to repay or refinance some $99 billion of local and offshore bonds this year. Just under half of that is outstanding dollar debt, Bloomberg-compiled data show.

  

  Bottom line: as much as Beijing wants to, it will have to step in and bailout not just the property developers but the entire housing markets, where transactions have cratered and confidence has evaporated. And to do that, China will have to ease financial conditions much more aggressively than it has done so far – yes, overnight Beijing cut rates for the first time since 2020, but that step is nowhere near enough. To avoid an all out depression, Beijing will have to do much, much more… and not just Chine but the rest of the world’s central banks too.  Which is why anyone who believes that the current tightening euphoria will last more than a few months, well we have a bridge in Wuhan  we’d like to sell you.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/17/2022 – 21:05

• Is The Bottom In? Macau Casino Stocks Rally Most In Years After Gaming Bill Eases Concerns
  Is The Bottom In? Macau Casino Stocks Rally Most In Years After Gaming Bill Eases Concerns

  Shares of Macau casino operators jumped the most in six years on Monday after officials in the gaming city introduced less harsh than expected rules, removing a lot of uncertainty that could increase the sector’s valuation. 

  Last Friday, Macau gaming officials proposed measures that would limit gaming licenses to six, and the duration of the license would be shortened to 10 years from 20. Initially, investors feared the licenses would only be five years. 

  The rules reduce the extension periods on licenses and increase domestic ownership of casinos to 15% from 10%. 

  Also, the tax rate of casinos would stay the same and would not require a government official to sit on the company’s board. The rule lifts a massive overhang for casino stocks that have been trashed over the past year. 

  On Monday, casino shares listed in Hong Kong jumped as much as 12%, the most significant daily increase in six years. Wynn Macau Ltd., Sands China Ltd., and Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd were some of the largest movers on the session. 

  Citigroup analyst George Choi wrote in a note to clients that gaming law revisions will “remove most investors’ key concerns, i.e., dividends, government oversight, minimum shareholding by a Macau permanent resident, gaming tax, etc.” He expects the sector’s multiple to “re-rate significantly from the current levels.”

  Choi wrote that potential border reopening would add more positivity to the sector’s valuation. 

  Goldman Sachs also favors Macau gaming stocks after the index has been halved over the last year.

  

  It seems like some notable research desks are willing to catch the falling knife in Macau gaming stocks. Some other positive news is that the People’s Bank of China slashed interest rates that could soon add liquidity to markets. Investors are also trying to catch the falling knife in Chinese technology stocks. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/17/2022 – 20:55

• '270 Doctors' Called Out Joe Rogan – But Vast Majority Of Authors, Signatories Are Not Medical Doctors
  ‘270 Doctors’ Called Out Joe Rogan – But Vast Majority Of Authors, Signatories Are Not Medical Doctors

  Authored by Jordan Schachtel via The Dossier,

  Are you seeing all of those blaring corporate press headlines targeting Joe Rogan this weekend, reporting on a letter from “270 doctors,” which described the famous podcaster as a “menace to public health”? Well, it turns out that the real arbiters of misinformation are the individuals behind the letter itself, and they are being helped along by a corrupt corporate media that is misreporting the credentials of its signatories.

  

  It was first reported by Rolling Stone, with a story titled, “Doctors Demand Spotify Puts an End to Covid Lies on ‘Joe Rogan Experience’”

  ‘Menace to public health’: 270 doctors call out Spotify over Joe Rogan’s podcast https://t.co/DhXJ0OPl10

  — The Guardian (@guardian) January 14, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Doctors urge Spotify to stop “enabling” Joe Rogan to “damage public trust in scientific research” https://t.co/y6khzW2ulJ

  — Salon (@Salon) January 16, 2022

  Yes, the media and Big Tech want to create the image of a hundreds-strong coalition of medical doctors who are genuinely concerned about Joe Rogan’s conversations on his massive platform. 

  “Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Joe Rogan has repeatedly spread misleading and false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine,” the doctors said in the letter.

  Rogan has been a regular subject of controversy at Spotify.

  https://t.co/5jTXPXw3gV

  — Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) January 16, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Twitter even got in on the propaganda campaign against Rogan, adding this “medical experts” letter to their curated headlines section.

  Surprise! @Twitter promoting leftist conspiracy to defame, smear, censor and deplatform @JoeRogan! pic.twitter.com/y5jCx4frDA

  — Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) January 16, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Well, I reviewed this open letter, and it turns out that only around 100 of the 270+ signatories to the letter are people with qualified medical degrees. And a large chunk of that 100 or so medical doctors are MDs employed at universities who are not in fact practitioners of medicine. 

  lol so about the 300 “doctors” crying about Joe Rogan pic.twitter.com/uil3eBHnrH

  — Luke Rudkowski (@Lukewearechange) January 16, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Yet part of the letter reads:

  “As physicians, we bear the arduous weight of a pandemic that has stretched our medical systems to their limits and only stands to be exacerbated by the anti-vaccination sentiment woven into this and other episodes of Rogan’s podcast.”

  Paradoxically, the disseminators of this petition are guilty of the very misinformation label that they’ve attached to Rogan. In fact, neither of the two reported co authors of the letter — Jessica Rivera and Ben Rein — possess medical degrees. Rivera holds a master’s degree and Rein is a PhD academic who researches psychiatry.

  The letter denouncing Joe Rogan and pressuring Spotify to censor his speech has all kinds of random signatories. By my count, the letter is signed by over 50 PhD academics, around 60 college professors, 29 nurses, 10 students, 4 medical residents, and even a handful of… science podcasters. 

  The letter, which uses the word misinformation nine times in five paragraphs, concludes with a call for Spotify to censor Rogan as part of a policy to “moderate misinformation on the platform.”

  Notably, there is no information on who or what group is behind the creation and circulation of the open letter. Rivera, the reported lead author of the letter, is associated with the far-left Rockefeller Foundation and The Atlantic, and she is a CNN contributor.

  * * *

  Subscribe to The Dossier

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/17/2022 – 20:31

• Luongo: We Are All Djokovic, Now!
  Luongo: We Are All Djokovic, Now!

  Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

  When I’ve talked in the past about the patchwork tyranny post COVID-9/11, I had more mundane things in mind than the fate of a major tennis star.

  Novak Djokovic was deported from Australia on Sunday after his appeal to reinstate his visa failed. And it failed not for health reasons but for political ones.

  To me, the kinds of terrible rules put in place for ‘public safety’ always conjure up images of casual oppression. Endless videos of pathetic public servants intimidating priests in churches or police arresting pub owners for serving willing patrons.

  But it goes far deeper than that. It’s impossible to even conceive of the ways petty bureaucrats and middle managers around the world have destroyed the lives of ordinary people simply trying to get through the day because of a flu.

  

  Since the beginning of the COVID-19 insanity Australia has been the poster child for this kind of thoughtless crime against common decency.

  Australian Immigration Minister Alex Hawke’s decision to revoke Djokovic’s visa was made for political reasons. He didn’t try to hide it. If anything, he was proud of this decision.

  Hawke said he accepted Djokovic’s recent Covid-19 infection meant he was a “negligible risk to those around him”, but that he was “perceived by some as a talisman of a community of anti-vaccine sentiment”.

  “I consider that Mr Djokovic’s ongoing presence in Australia may lead to an increase in anti-vaccination sentiment generated in the Australian community, potentially leading to an increase in civil unrest of the kind previously experienced in Australia with rallies and protests which may themselves be a source of community transmission.

  “Mr Djokovic is … a person of influence and status.

  “Having regard to … Mr Djokovic’s conduct after receiving a positive Covid-19 result, his publicly stated views, as well as his unvaccinated status, I consider that his ongoing presence in Australia may encourage other people to disregard or act inconsistently with public health advice and policies in Australia.”

  These are the words of the committed totalitarian. He hides it behind his public responsibilities, in this case the health status of an entire nation. If he’s not being controlled by outside forces (yeah, right) then he’s been infected with that dangerous solipsism which comes with this much raw power.

  That corruption cannot be avoided.

  But Hawke’s decision stems from Australia’s backing themselves into the corner over COVID-9/11 policy. They cannot be seen as backing down for anyone, especially someone like Djokovic.

  To do so, as Hawke points out, would invite questioning the policy. And their policy is sacrosanct.

  However, having admitted that Djokovic posed almost no threat of spreading COVID-9/11 the only thing at stake was the Australian government’s power.

  This type of decision reveals 1) how deeply unpopular the COVID-9/11 rules are in Australia and 2) how weak the Aussie government’s hold over its people really is.

  They could have weathered this if they had just quietly let Djokovic into the country to compete. They could have spun it had they wanted to.

  They chose escalating the standoff to make an example of him to the unvaxxed population. There is no hope. You will submit. If we can humiliate Djokovic, just imagine what we can do to you.

  And they revealed just how desperate they are.

  Bureaucrats like Hawke have no sense of the politics of their decisions. They are order-takers, not order-makers. He was ordered to do this. When this standoff started it was during the height of the big push to drive fear over the Omicron variant of COVID-9/11.

  That rollout failed spectacularly.

  Omicron has flared up and out so quickly this affair now looks like the most insane application of government paranoia this side of Pyongyang.

  Those that started this standoff created the mess and didn’t have the sense to clean it up.

  Because they insist on building trailer parks in the face of a Cat-5 hurricane of public anger.

  They hoped to send the message that no one can escape the jab. The Davos agenda of health passes and total technocratic control is inevitable. It’s the EU variant of the virus which Hawke’s immigration policies couldn’t stop coming to Australia.

  What they wound up with is a whole lotta people shaking their heads.

  But, don’t think for a second Australia is done sending messages to the untermenschen. Now, after he’s been deported, barred from competing and earning his living, Djokovic is liable for all the court costs associated with this decision.

  Those costs are estimated to be $500,000.

  The three judge panel that upheld the lower court ruling avoided any responsibility in the matter, neatly throwing the decision right back on Minister Hawke. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, clearly one of the people pushing this disaster behind the scenes, also left Hawke out to dry.

  Next up for Djokovic will a standoff with France over the French Open. France and Davos will hound him until he submits because they think he cares more about his 21st Grand Slam title than he does his own health. It guess they didn’t get his message during the Australian affair.

  But their message is very clear. We are in charge. We can make whatever rules we deem necessary. If you challenge them not only will we deny your challenge on arbitrary grounds but we’ll bankrupt you in the process.

  And here I thought we in the post-enlightenment West could petition our governments over unjust laws. I thought this was the first world and not some tin pot dictatorship of thin-lipped, fat-headed midwits?

  Only the most insane people are cheering this decision today. They are a part of the 29% of Democrats in the US who believe the unvaxxed should have their children taken from them. Sadly, there are still too many in the thrall of the COVID-9/11 mind virus.

  But, if you didn’t get the message before the persecution of Novak Djokovic, I hope you get it now. And I hope he continues to be an example for the rest of us.

  *  *  *

  Join my Patreon if you got the message

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  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/17/2022 – 20:30

• China Halts All Foreign Mail Due To COVID Threat As Tianjin Reports 80 New Cases
  China Halts All Foreign Mail Due To COVID Threat As Tianjin Reports 80 New Cases

  With the Winter Olympics in Beijing set to start in just a few weeks, the CCP is still struggling to suppress a handful of small but alarming outbreaks of COVID, several of which have involved cases of the omicron variant.

  And now, in the capital city, Beijing officials are warning locals not to order items and products from abroad, because they’re worried that COVID might be carried into the country on the outsides of these packages. Or at least that’s what they want the public to think.

  Chinese authorities have been warning for years that COVID might be spread on the packaging of foodstuffs and other goods shipped internationally, something that many scientists have questioned, but that Chinese authorities have nonetheless kept alive with their state-controlled media.

  

  One woman who apparently tested positive for the virus, then traces of the virus had been found on the packaging, or so at least Chinese authorities say.

  All of this is happening as authorities have imposed tough restrictions on Beijing as it prepares to host the Olympics. For example, all new arrivals to the city must take a virus test within a day of travel to show that they are testing negative, regardless of whether they have been vaccinated or not.

  Health official Pang Xinghuo told reporters on Monday that the virus had been found on the surface of a letter the infected person had received from Canada, as well as inside the unopened letter, according to AFP.

  Dozens of letters from the same batch were tested, and five showed positive traces of COVID, Pang said, including samples from inside unopened letters. Beijing’s CDC said the possibility that the woman was infected by a parcel from another country could not be ruled out.

  Nordea’s economists still expect China’s economy to grow at a pace of 5% over the next year, despite the risk posed by omicron. China’s growth outlook stabilized in the last quarter of 2021.

  The main factors that adversely affected China’s growth prospects in the second half of 2021 were the tight COVID policy and the real estate sector slowdown. They are expected to continue to dampen. And on a positive note, the shortage of electricity has eased since the start of October. Beijing’s real problem, according to Nordea, is that it doesn’t seem to have an “exit strategy” from its “COVID Zero” lockdown-centric approach.

  Meanwhile, in Tianjin, a port city that’s just 130 Km from Beijing, another 80 local cases of COVID have been reported, the biggest daily jump yet. The city and the port are still open and running as authorities have locked down a handful of neighborhoods in the city.

  For the record, Tianjin, which is situated about 30 minutes by train from Beijing, is one of China’s largest cities by population and home to one of its most active ports. It is the “recommended” port of entry for goods for the Winter Olympics and operations have not been affected by the outbreak, according to the state-controlled local media.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/17/2022 – 20:00

• AMA Defies Supreme Court Ruling, Own Code Of Ethics, Calls For Employer Vaccine Mandates
  AMA Defies Supreme Court Ruling, Own Code Of Ethics, Calls For Employer Vaccine Mandates

  By Mark Glennon of Wirepoints

  The president of the Chicago-based American Medical Association, Gerald E. Harmon, M.D., wrote on Friday in Crain’s Chicago Business that employers should impose COVID vaccine mandates as a condition of employment.

  Last week’s decision by the United States Supreme Court invalidating the Biden Administration’s attempt to force employers to do so “should not,” Harmon wrote, “prevent these employers from doing what must be done in the name of public health: requiring vaccines to protect their workers, our communities and our nation from the ravages of this pandemic.”

  “Our only hope is that large employers do what’s right—not only for their own employees and their families, but for the health of our nation,” says Harmon.

  If only we could hope that Harmon and his association would honor their own code of ethics. The AMA’s Code of Medical Ethics Opinion 2.1.1 says this:

  Informed consent to medical treatment is fundamental in both ethics and law. Patients have the right to receive information and ask questions about recommended treatments so that they can make well-considered decisions about care. Successful communication in the patient-physician relationship fosters trust and supports shared decision making. The process of informed consent occurs when communication between a patient and physician results in the patient’s authorization or agreement to undergo a specific medical intervention.

  That’s a plain statement of the informed consent doctrine, which is among the most widely recognized and time-honored principles of medical ethics here and abroad. Everybody of sufficient age and sound mind is supposed to have right to decide what is to be done to his or her body.

  It’s “arguably the most deeply rooted doctrine in contemporary medical ethics,” wrote two medical ethics experts last year in the Wall Street Journal. In that column, a director of the Medical Ethics Program at the University of California, Irvine and a law professor at Notre Dame wrote, “Authorities rushing to implement mandatory vaccination protocols are ignoring available scientific data, basic principles of immunology and elementary norms.”

  The AMA’s Code of Ethics is for physicians, not employers, but that’s precisely what makes Harmon’s indifference to the principle of informed consent so egregious. He is effectively calling on employers to override the physician-patient relationship entirely, thereby avoiding the duty physicians would have to honor it.

  That workaround may not fly legally since employers may have a legal duty to get informed consent to coerced vaccinations, at least as some mandate opponents see things. I have no opinion on that; the point here is not about the legalities.

  The point, instead, is about doing what is right and what is ethical. It’s the principle that matters, and it should matter not just for physicians. The AMA’s code of ethics properly states that principle and it is rightly applied to any person or entity, including employers, who are in a position to force medical treatment on somebody else. Harmon and the AMA apparently care nothing about that principle.

  Harmon went on to cite as “evidence of a vaccine mandate’s effectiveness” the case of United Airlines, which imposed a vax mandate on its employees. That’s not scientific evidence. Harmon ignored countless studies now available addressing many points of debate about the vax.

  What we do know is that experts seem to agree that the vax significantly reduces chances of hospitalization or death. But it has also become clear that the vax is of little or no value in reducing spread of the virus to others, which we wrote about last week. That destroys any rationale for mandates by employers or anybody else. Vaccinations affect only the vaccinated so the decision should be left to the individual.

  The only other possible rationale for an employer mandate is the hospital and staff overload, which is real in many locations. But that overload results largely from mandates themselves, imposed on healthcare workers, many of whom have quit as a consequence. The Supreme Court upheld that mandate on any recipient of federal funding, which includes most every hospital and provider.

  The load on hospitals and healthcare workers is also undoubtedly attributable in large part to the indifference of most of the medical establishments to treatments. The best, newest treatments are in such short supply that that they are now rationed by the federal government. The AMA, like the federal government, systematically ignored therapeutics from the start, focusing almost exclusively on the vaccines and masks as prevention, which has turned out to be futile. Had development and distribution of therapeutics been emphasized early, countless victims might never be reaching the hospital. The AMA shares blame for that.

  Finally, Harmon complained about politicized science. “It is most unfortunate that politicization of the virus and the vaccines developed to protect against severe illness and death has become a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to defeating the pandemic.”

  The AMA and Harmon are perhaps the least credible voices in America to be complaining about politicized science. They have gone to truly absurd lengths inserting woke, racial politics into healthcare, as documented by RealClear Investigations in a two-part series. A lead editorial in the AMA journal’s August special issue dedicated to racial health disparities called systemic racism “a scientific fact beyond dispute and said all medical journals are morally obligated to document it in their research.”

  Even The Atlantic, which is very progressive, ridiculed the AMA and Harmon for the damage their racial politics are inflicting on medical science and on the genuine interests of disadvantaged people. And dissenting from the AMA’s racial politics can jeopardize you job, The Atlantic wrote.

  Let’s hope employers are more ethical than Harmon and the American Medical Association.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/17/2022 – 19:30

• WEF's Schwab Gives China's Xi Propaganda Platform Against "Hegemonic Bullying… Cold War Mentality"
  WEF’s Schwab Gives China’s Xi Propaganda Platform Against “Hegemonic Bullying… Cold War Mentality”

  With Davos shut down by the latest incarnation of COVID variant, the world’s great-est and good-est decided this year’s get together to tell the world what they should think would be done virtually this year.

  None other than the Dr.Evil-esque Klaus Schwab kicked things off in a brief introductory statement that had everything except a pinky-finger-in-the-corner-of-the-mouth:

  NOW – Klaus Schwab opens World Economic Forum’s virtual “Davos Agenda” and introduces China’s Xi Jinping. pic.twitter.com/ykcyw8aiGZ

  — Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) January 17, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  After urging his fellow elites to “narrow the gap between rich and poor,” Schwab introduced Chinese President Xi Jinping who wasted not time in warning against the “fanning of ideological antagonism and the politicizing of economic, scientific and technological issues.”

  Diplomatically careful not to accuse any individual country – but blatantly obvious to anyone not completely red-pilled by Schwab’s heroic introduction of the Chinese leader – Xi warned nations against protectionism, well as “hegemony and bullying,” urging countries to work cooperatively on global challenges.

   “We need to discard Cold War mentality and seek peaceful co-existence and win-win outcomes.”

  “Our world today is far from being tranquil. Rhetorics that stoke hatred and prejudice abound. Acts of containment, suppression or confrontation arising thereof do all harm, not the least good to world peace and security,” he added, according to a translation.

  “History has proved time and again that confrontation does not solve problems. It only invites catastrophic consequences.”

  “Protectionism and unilateralism can protect no one. They ultimately hurt the interests of others as well as one’s own. Even worse are the practices of hegemony and bullying, which run counter to the tide of history.”

  Xi said the “right way forward for humanity is peaceful development and win-win cooperation.”

  Read Xi’s full statement here.

  This is the same Xi who is peacefully militarizing islands in the Pacific, recently bullied any dissenters (or media) in Hong Kong, hegemonically pressuring Taiwan’s democratically-elected leaders to accept his rule, and ‘allegedly’ is suppressing millions of Uyghur muslims.

  

  However, amid all the blame-scaping for global unease, Xi’s true fears emerged as he made it very clear that “economic globalization is the trend of the times” and that other nations tightening policies (as China eases) is a recipe for disaster (in the world according to Xi):

  “The global low inflation environment has notably changed, and the risks of inflation driven by multiple factors are surfacing.

  If major economies slam on the brakes or take a U-turn in their monetary policies, there would be serious negative spillovers.

  They would present challenges to global economic and financial stability, and developing countries would bear the brunt of it.”

  President Xi Jinping warns of serious negative spillovers if major economies slam on the breaks or u-turn on their monetary policies. #DavosAgenda pic.twitter.com/lAmCm6jKNJ

  — World Economic Forum (@wef) January 17, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  As we have noted previously, this is likely to become THE global economy story of the first half of 2022 as China is forced to ease (with PPI in the double-digits and growth still above 8%) to forestall a housing crisis and social unrest while the rest of the world is tightening (especially The Fed) amid multi-decade high inflation and political pressures.

  China is cutting rates with its PPI still in the double digits https://t.co/UHYFAXscqR

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 17, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  We have little doubt that the rhetoric from Beijing will crank up to ’11’ once The Fed starts hiking and China sees huge capital outflows – mostly via crypto.

  The forward FX market still expected Yuan to weaken (against the USD) over the next 12 months…

  

  BUT, simply put, one of these two ‘markets’ will be wrong – the market is anticipating dramatic rate-hikes this year by The Fed AND is expecting the Chinese Yuan to strengthen (or weaken less) over the same period…

  

  And we suspect we know which as Rabobank noted earlier:

  “Whichever way the Fed goes, it will be wrong. Back off, and watch inflation expectations become more entrenched. Press on, and watch things get ugly.”

  And finally, if you doubted Xi’s support for one-world-government (presumably based in Beijing), this closing paragraph should clarify things:

  “Major economies should see the world as one community, think in a more systematic way, increase policy transparency and information sharing, and coordinate the objectives, intensity and pace of fiscal and monetary policies, so as to prevent the world economy from plummeting again. Major developed countries should adopt responsible economic policies, manage policy spillovers, and avoid severe impacts on developing countries. International economic and financial institutions should play their constructive role to pool global consensus, enhance policy synergy and prevent systemic risks.”

  …

  “We should follow the trend of history, work for a stable international order, advocate common values of humanity, and build a community with a shared future for mankind. We should choose dialogue over confrontation, inclusiveness over exclusion, and stand against all forms of unilateralism, protectionism, hegemony or power politics.”

  Translation: Can’t we all just get along… in line behind Beijing.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/17/2022 – 19:00

• Don't Underestimate How Badly The Powerful Need Control Of Online Speech
  Don’t Underestimate How Badly The Powerful Need Control Of Online Speech

  Authored by Caitlin Johnstone,

  Seems like almost every day now the mass media are blaring about the need for speech on the internet to be controlled or restricted in some way. Today they’re running stories about Joe Rogan and Covid misinformation; tomorrow it will be something else.

  

  The reasons for the need to control online speech change from day to day, but the demand for that control remains a constant. Some days it’s a need to protect the citizenry from online disinformation campaigns by foreign governments. Sometimes it’s the need to guarantee election security. Sometimes it’s the need to eliminate domestic extremism and conspiracy theories. Sometimes it’s Covid misinformation. The problems change, but the solution is always the same: increased regulation of speech by monopolistic online platforms in steadily increasing coordination with the US government.

  It’s actually pretty comical at this point, once you notice it. It’s like if you had an expensive Prada bag that your friend really coveted and she was always making up excuses to try and take it home with her. “Gosh I’m carrying all these small objects and I have nothing to carry them in!” “You’re going on vacation? I’ll look after your Prada bag for you!” “Oh no you slipped and now you’re clinging to a cliff’s edge! Quick! Throw me your Prada bag!” Once you know what they’re actually after, their attempts to obtain it look clownish and silly.

  Caitlin Johnstone: The Obedient Censors at Meta https://t.co/M2ewa4zK1A
  A monopolistic Silicon Valley mega-corporation deleting political speech about an important historical figure because Washington says he was a terrorist is a notably brazen act of censorship. pic.twitter.com/JooPenFZfY

  — Consortium News (@Consortiumnews) January 7, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Whenever I talk about how the immense power structure which the mass media serves and protects has a desperate need to control online speech, I’ll always get a few people objecting that the powerful don’t care about what ideas and information the ordinary riff raff share with each other on internet forums. They just do what they want regardless of public opinion, like Greek gods on Mount Olympus.

  And really nothing could be further from the truth. Controlling the thoughts we think about our nation and our world are of paramount importance to our rulers, because it’s only by controlling what we think that they can control how we vote, how we act, and whether or not we get fed up with being exploited and oppressed by a loose alliance of unelected plutocrats and government operatives. There is nothing, literally nothing, that these people would not do to maintain this control. Their very survival depends on it.

  Michael Parenti summed this up perfectly in his 2015 book “Profit Pathology and Other Indecencies” with this passage that was recently shared by Louis Allday:

  “But they don’t care about what we think. They turn a deaf ear to us,” some people complain. That is not true. They care very much about what you think. In fact, that is the only thing about you that holds their attention and concern. They don’t care if you go hungry, unemployed, sick, or homeless. But they do care when you are beginning to entertain resistant democratic thoughts. They get nervous when you discard your liberal complaints and adopt a radical analysis. They do care that you are catching on as to what the motives and functions of the national security state and the US global empire are all about at home and in so many corners of the world. They get furiously concerned when you and millions like you are rejecting the pap that is served up by corporate media and establishment leaders.

  By controlling our perceptions, they control our society; they control public opinion and public discourse. And they limit the range and impact of our political consciousness. The plutocrats know that their power comes from their ability to control our empowering responses. They know they can live at the apex of the social pyramid only as long as they can keep us in line at the pyramid’s base. Who pays for all their wars? We do. Who fights these wars? We do or our low-income loved ones do. If we refuse to be led around on a super-patriotic, fear-ridden leash and if we come to our own decisions and act upon them more and more as our ranks grow, then the ruling profiteers’ power shrinks and can even unwind and crash — as has happened with dynasties and monarchies of previous epochs.

  We need to strive in every way possible for the revolutionary unraveling, a revolution of organized consciousness striking at the empire’s heart with full force when democracy is in the streets and mobilized for the kind of irresistible upsurge that seems to come from nowhere yet is sometimes able to carry everything before it.

  There is nothing sacred about the existing system. All economic and political institutions are contrivances that should serve the interests of the people. When they fail to do so, they should be replaced by something more responsive, more just, and more democratic.

  Preventing their replacement with a system that is more responsive, just and democratic is precisely why our rulers are so keen on controlling the way we think, act and vote. They exert this control with their total domination of the mass media and mainstream education systems, with Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, and with the rapidly increasing normalization of internet censorship.

  The dawn of the internet sparked great hope for those who knew that the ruling power structures of our day retain supremacy by controlling and manipulating people’s access to and understanding of information; the possibility of billions of human minds freely spreading awareness of what’s going on in our world and sharing revolutionary ideas to address our problems spelled beautiful things for our future to anyone with a lucid understanding of the obstacles we face.

  Those Who Support Internet Censorship Lack Psychological Maturity

  “The danger of government-tied monopolistic tech platforms controlling worldwide speech far outweighs the danger of whatever voice you might happen to dislike at any given moment.”https://t.co/6M7FKYw668

  — Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) January 3, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Unfortunately, our rulers understood the significance of that moment too. They’ve been working tirelessly to ensure that the internet serves as a net positive for themselves and a net negative for the rest of us, manipulating the large-scale movements of information so that dissident voices are increasingly marginalized and inconsequential while giving themselves the ability to funnel propaganda into public minds far more rapidly and efficiently than ever before. If they succeed in their objectives, ordinary people will wind up no better at sharing unauthorized ideas and information than they were before the internet, while our rulers will be far more effective in controlling the way we think at mass scale.

  That they will succeed is by no means guaranteed. We are living in an entirely unprecedented moment in human history with many large-scale systems on the precipice of failure while technological advancement creates many other unpredictable factors; gaps could open up at any time to let light shine through in the massive movements that humanity is poised for. There is no way to accurately predict the future in a situation the likes of which we’ve never seen before, where patterns are crumbling and narrative is hitting white noise saturation point.

  Anything can happen. Win or lose, this is a hell of a time to be alive.

  *  *  *

  My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.

  Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/17/2022 – 18:30

• Apple Tells Employees They Have "Four Weeks To Comply" After Becoming Eligible For Booster Shots
  Apple Tells Employees They Have “Four Weeks To Comply” After Becoming Eligible For Booster Shots

  Apple is one of the first major corporations going on the record and telling its employees that it doesn’t just need to see proof of vaccination, but now it also needs proof of a booster shot. 

  The company is requiring boosters for store and corporate employees, according to an internal email seen by The Verge.

  Employees have “four weeks to comply” once they become eligible for booster shots, or else they will have to take “frequent tests to enter a retail store, partner store, or Apple office starting on February 15th,” the report says. 

  Unvaccinated employees must now always provide negative COVID-19 rapid antigen tests before entering the workplace. 

  

  Apple’s internal memo reportedly reads: “Due to waning efficacy of the primary series of COVID-19 vaccines and the emergence of highly transmissible variants such as Omicron, a booster shot is now part of staying up to date with your COVID-19 vaccination to protect against severe disease.”

  The company started requiring unvaccinated employees to take daily tests before entering the office last year. It also required retail workers to test twice a week. 

  Meta also said this past week that its employees would need to get booster shots before its company-wide return to office in March. 

   

   

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/17/2022 – 18:00

• Politics Is Dead, Here's What Killed It
  Politics Is Dead, Here’s What Killed It

  Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

  Here’s “politics” in America now: come with mega-millions or don’t even bother to show up.

  

  Representational democracy–a.k.a. politics as a solution to social and economic problems–has passed away. It did not die a natural death. Politics developed a cancer very early in life (circa the early 1800s), caused by wealth outweighing public opinion. This cancer spread slowly but metastasized in the past few decades, spreading to every nook and cranny of our society and economy as “democracy” devolved into an invitation-only auction of elections and political favors.

  Politics might have had a fighting chance but three forces betrayed the nation and its citizenry.

  1. The Federal Reserve transferred trillions of dollars of unearned wealth into the feeding troughs of the super-wealthy and corporations, vastly increasing the wealth the top 0.01% had to buy elections and favors. The Federal Reserve cloaked its treachery with jargon– quantitative easing, stimulus, etc.–and then stabbed the nation’s representational democracy in the back.

  2. The Supreme Court betrayed the nation’s representative democracy by labeling corporations buying elections and political favors a form of “free speech.” (Please don’t hurt yourself laughing too hard.) The Supreme Court’s equating wealth buying elections and favors with individual citizens’ sacrosanct right of free speech was a knife in the back of the nation and its citizenry.

  3. The two political parties betrayed their traditional voter bases to kneel at the altar of corporate / elite wealth, wealth which bought elections and political favors. The Democrats, traditional champions of the workforce in the 20th century, abandoned workers in favor of serving their corporate masters, masking their betrayal with fine-sounding phrases.

  The Republican Party, traditionally promoters of Big Business (Wall Street, banks, mega-corporations), had maintained a narrow but crucial interest in trust-busting (limiting monopolies) to defend free enterprise and small business from the predations of monopolies and cartels. Those days are long past; just as the Democratic Party tossed the working class overboard to the sharks, the Republican Party walked small business off the gangplank right into the voracious jaws of cartels and globalized, financialized corporate sharks.

  To cloak their betrayal and treachery, the parties have pursued a divide-and-conquer distraction game, pushing half the nation into one-size-fits-all “enemies lists” with labels that have lost all meaning other than as means to promote divisiveness and rancor: Liberal and Conservative, socialist and capitalist, etc.

  It’s not the citizenry who are “deplorable,” it’s the parties’ corporate-derriere-kissing toadies, lackeys, apparatchiks, purveyors of propaganda, enforcers, apologists, sycophants, grifters and “leaders” who manage to greatly increase their private wealth while “serving the public” (heh).

  These three betrayals of public trust and representational democracy caused the demise of politics as a solution to social and economic problems. “Politics” has been stripped to its essence: an invitation-only auction of elections and political favors. The price to watch from the rear of the auction is $1 million; to actually place a bid, the minimum is $10 million, but the winning bids are generally much higher.

  (Lobbying, campaign contributions, bogus think-tanks, and philanthro-capitalist foundations are all part of the auction funding.)

  Here’s “politics” in America now: come with mega-millions or don’t even bother to show up. Choose which “enemies list” you want to be on; there’s not much choice. And don’t forget to put a flower on the grave of representational democracy.

  *  *  *

  My new book is now available at a 20% discount this month: Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $8.95, print $20). If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.
   

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/17/2022 – 17:30

• Pfizer CEO Predicts Life On Earth "Will Return To Normal" In The Spring
  Pfizer CEO Predicts Life On Earth “Will Return To Normal” In The Spring

  Just a few days ago, Bill Gates shared some of his (revised) thoughts on the COVID pandemic and the trajectory that omicron has left us on. Several weeks after warning that omicron’s heightened infectiousness might send the pandemic into overdrive, the Microsoft founder postulated instead that omicron might hasten the end of the pandemic by leaving the human population with more antibodies against the virus. As a result, SARS-CoV-2 might enter its endemic stage more quickly, Gates suggested.

  This view, that the end of the pandemic might finally be at hand after two years of suffering, has become increasingly popular as of late. Take this piece from the BBC: “Endemic COVID: Is the pandemic entering its endgame?”.

  While the piece mostly focused on the UK, the sense is that the developed world more broadly is closer to the end because of its access to vaccines.

  So, is a new Covid-era truly imminent and what will that actually mean for our lives?

  “We’re almost there, it is now the beginning of the end, at least in the UK,” Prof Julian Hiscox, chairman in infection and global health at the University of Liverpool, tells me. “I think life in 2022 will be almost back to before the pandemic.”

  What’s changing is our immunity. The new coronavirus first emerged two years ago in Wuhan, China, and we were vulnerable. It was a completely new virus that our immune systems had not experienced before and we had no drugs or vaccines to help.

  It even came with his handy illustration depicting the difference between “pandemic” and “endemic” COVID:

  

  Source: The BBC

  Well, it appears the CEO of Pfizer has caught on to this narrative – and he approves. Speaking to the French media, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla that while he expects COVID to continue to circulate for many years to come, he expects future waves won’t cause the types of restrictions that people have become used to over the last two years, and that life will return to “normal” in the spring.

  

  Bourla told French news outlet Le Figaro in an interview published Jan. 16 that he expects a “return to normal life” at some point in spring of this year. However, he added the caveat that the mysterious dynamics of COVID’s spread make accurate predictions more difficult.

  “We will soon be able to resume a normal life,” Albert Bourla told the French paper. “We are well positioned to get there in the spring thanks to all the tools at our disposal: tests, very effective vaccines and the first treatments that can be taken at home.”

  He also credited improvements in COVID testing, vaccines, and therapeutics for his optimistic outlook, telling BFM TV that he expects the current omicron-driven wave to be the “last with so many restrictions.”

  But given its affinity for its human hosts, COVID will likely be “very difficult to get rid of,” which is why Bourla expects it to become endemic, with the occasional seasonal flareup, like the flu.

  Finally, the Pfizer CEO shared details of local partnerships that he said would help France produce more of Pfizer’s COVID fighting drug Paxlovid.

  With his approval rating at an all-time low, President Biden better hope the likes of Bourla and Gates are right. Ending the COVID pandemic might be the only thing that could help Biden regain some support among the tired and frustrated American electorate.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/17/2022 – 17:00

• Convicted Pedophile Funneled Millions In Foreign Cash Into Hillary Clinton's 2016 Campaign
  Convicted Pedophile Funneled Millions In Foreign Cash Into Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Campaign

  Convicted pedophile, UAE adviser and central witness in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, George Nader, has pleaded guilty to his role in helping the UAE funnel millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions into US campaigns during the 2016 presidential election, according to The Intercept, citing federal court documents filed last month.

  

  In a December sentencing memo, federal prosecutors disclosed that Nader had agreed months early to plead guilty to a single count of felony conspiracy to defraud the US government by pumping millions in donations to Hillary Clinton’s campaign – concealing the foreign origin of the funds.

  Nader conspired to hide the funds “out of a desire to lobby on behalf and advance the interests of his client, the government of the United Arab Emirates,” according to the prosecutors’ sentencing memo. Nader received the money for the illegal donations from the UAE government, the memo said. The filing marks the first time that the U.S. government has explicitly accused the UAE, a close ally, of illegally seeking to buy access to candidates during a presidential election.

  Nader’s guilty plea opens a new window into the efforts of the United Arab Emirates and its de facto ruler, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, known as MBZ, to influence the outcome of the 2016 election and shape subsequent U.S. policy in the Gulf. The government’s memo notes that Nader and Los Angeles businessperson Ahmad “Andy” Khawaja also sought to cultivate “key figures” in the Trump campaign and that Khawaja donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee. It is unclear where that money came from. -The Intercept

  Nader is accused of taking instructions from UAE Crown Prince MBZ, and gave regular updates on his efforts to get close to Clinton.

  In total, Nader transferred nearly $5 million from his UAE business to Khawaja – CEO of a Los Angeles-based payment processing company. According to prosecutors, the funds were disguised as a routine business contract between the two men. Of the total transferred, more than $3.5 million came from the UAE government and was given to pro-Clinton Democratic political committees. Prosecutors have yet to publicly identify what happened to the remaining $1.4 million Nader transferred to Khawaja.

  In 2016, Khawaja co-hosted an August fundraiser for Clinton which included a laundry list of high-profile guests, including Univision owner Haim Saban, movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg and basketball legend Magic Johnson, according to the report. According to the indictment, Khawaja conspired with six other individuals to conceal his excessive contributions. Others who were indicted were also linked to donations to Clinton and other Democrats.

  The indictment quotes an alleged encrypted message that Nader sent an official from Foreign Country A via WhatsApp after Khawaja contributed $275,000 and invited Nader to attend and April 16, 2016, event for presidential Candidate 1.

  Wonderful meeting with the Big Lady . . . Cant wait to tell you about it, Nader allegedly wrote, in an apparent reference to Clinton.

  The indictment noted that political committees that received funding unwittingly submitted false disclosure reports and were presumably victims of the plot. Still, Hillary Clinton apparently attended numerous events, including small gatherings, with Nader, who on July 19, 2016, messaged the foreign official a photograph of him with Candidate 1s spouse an apparent reference to Bill Clinton at Khawajas home. –Washington Post

  Prosecutors have sought a five-year sentence for Nader – after he completes the 10-year sentence he’s currently serving for possessing child pornography, and for sex-trafficking a minor to the US “for the purpose of engaging in criminal sexual activity.”

  Nader was arrested in January 2018 at Dulles Airport by agents working for Mueller. A search of his iPhones revealed child pornography, which we imagine was used as leverage to gain his cooperation. Three months later, prosecutors filed charges against Nader for the images – however they were filed under seal and kept secret from Nader’s lawyers while he was working with Mueller.

  In July of 2017 – 15 months after Mueller let a serial pedophile roam the streets in the hopes he’d be able to nail Trump, Nader was finally indicted on both the child porn and for sex-trafficking a 14-year-old boy.

  And of course, Mueller knew about Nader’s 1991 conviction on child pornography charges in the US – for which he served only six months in a halfway house thanks to his role in helping to free American hostages in Beirut. He was also convicted in the Czech Republic in 2003 on 10 counts of having sex with underage boys, and eventually received a one-year prison sentence.

  Read the rest of the report here.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/17/2022 – 16:30

• Union Pacific Bashes LA's Social Justice Reform, Threatens To Leave City Amid Soaring Train Thefts
  Union Pacific Bashes LA’s Social Justice Reform, Threatens To Leave City Amid Soaring Train Thefts

  A top Union Pacific Railroad official threatened to leave Los Angeles over the District Attorney’s progressive measures to lower criminal theft offenses amid a wave of criminal gangs looting rail cars. 

  Adrian Guerrero, Union Pacific’s director of public affairs, wrote a letter to LA County District Attorney George Gascón, denouncing the local government’s relaxed criminal policies, or rather “well-intentioned social justice goals,” as a catalyst for a wave of rail car thefts. 

  “We find ourselves coming back to the same results with the Los Angeles County criminal justice system. Criminals are caught and arrested, turned over to local authorities for booking, arraigned before local courts, charges are reduced to a misdemeanor or petty offense, and the criminal is released after paying a nominal fine,” wrote Guerrero.

  He said most criminals robbing trains search for Amazon and UPS packages, are released back onto the streets within a day. 

  I’m told by law enforcement these @UPS bags are especially sought after by thieves opening cargo containers… they are often full of boxes with merchandise bound for residential addresses. More valuable than say, a cargo container full of low value bulky items like toilet paper. pic.twitter.com/Tj5bQNIeby

  — John Schreiber (@johnschreiber) January 13, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  “Even with all these arrests made, the no-cash bail policy and extended timeframe for suspects to appear in court is causing re-victimization to UP by these same criminals,” Guerrero continued. “In fact, criminals boast to our officers that charges will be pled down to simple trespassing – which bears no serious consequence.”

  “Without any judicial deterrence or consequence, it is no surprise that over the past year, UP has witnessed the significant increase in criminal rail theft described above,” he said.

  “While we understand the well-intended social justice goals of the policy, we need our justice system to support our partnership efforts with local law enforcement, hold these criminals accountable, and most importantly, help protect our employees and the critical local and national rail network.”

  

  Guerrero disclosed that “over 90 containers are compromised per day,” and the company “has experienced an over 160% increase in criminal rail theft in Los Angeles County” since December 2020. “In several months during that period, the increase from the previous year surpassed 200%. In October 2021 alone, the increase was 356% over compared to October 2020,” he noted.

  Looters and smash and grab gangs have elevated their thefts in recent months. From pharmacies to grocery stores to jewelry stores to expensive boutique shops, thieves are becoming more intelligent and target high-value items. Almost like someone is directing them what to target and how. 

  Guerrero said the thefts are so severe and costing the company millions of dollars that it has been “contemplating serious changes to our operating plans to avoid Los Angeles County.” 

  Los Angeles is in a state of lawlessness, and there’s no turning back. Far-left progressive policies transform the metro area into America’s new wild west. What the city needs is a regime change. Otherwise, businesses like Union Pacific will leave if criminals aren’t held accountable for their actions. 

   * * * 

  Here’s Guerrero’s full letter: 

  

  

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/17/2022 – 16:00

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• State-Backed Doping Strategy Imposed On Chinese Athletes, Former Doctor's New Book To Release Before Beijing Olympics
  State-Backed Doping Strategy Imposed On Chinese Athletes, Former Doctor’s New Book To Release Before Beijing Olympics

  Authored by Shawn Lin via The Epoch Times,

  Former Chinese national sports team doctor Xue Yinxian revealed China’s General Administration of Sport has been widely doping Chinese athletes. The whistleblower’s new book—containing extensive evidence on this—will be published before the Beijing Winter Olympics as a reminder to the international community that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is violating not only human rights but also the spirit of the Olympics, Xue’s son said.

  Xue wrote 68 work diaries from 1978 to 1985 when she served as the head of medical supervision in the Training Bureau of China’s General Administration of Sport. In 2017, Xue fled China with her diaries, and she is now living with her son Yang Weidong in Germany.

  

  Former Chinese National Team doctor Xue Yinxian in Germany in 2017. (Courtesy of Xue Yinxian)

  Yang, who assisted his mother with the new book entitled “China’s Drug,” told the Chinese-language Epoch Times that in addition to the doping cases that have been detected, the table tennis team, women’s volleyball team, gymnastics team, badminton team, etc.—as long as they belong to the 11 teams under the main control of the State General Administration of Sports and the Training Bureau—all are requested to consume performance-enhancing drugs.

  “The ‘scientific training’ proposed by the Training Bureau of the CCP’s National Sports Commission is in essence ‘doping training,’” Yang said.

  On Oct. 11, 1978, Chen Xian, then vice director of the General Administration of Sport, chaired a meeting of the administration’s medical department, which Xue attended as a doctor for the basketball team. At the meeting, Chen said that performance-enhancing drugs were being used abroad, so “why can’t we use them?”

  At that time, China had just come out of the Cultural Revolution and was facing a severe shortage of materials—even food needed to be bought with rationed tickets. Because of that, the sports department regulator would think the only way for Chinese athletes to get fit and compete in the international arena was to rely on doping substances.

  Since then, the history of Chinese athletes taking banned drugs began, Yang said.

  Medals of Chinese Sports Tainted by Doping

  Yang told Radio Free Asia on Jan. 6 that the first application of banned doping was in the table tennis team, weightlifting team, track and field team, and swimming team. Then in the later stages of the trial, all athletes were doping.

  

  Lang Ping of Team China looks on against Team Argentina during the Women’s Preliminary Pool B volleyball on day ten of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Ariake Arena in Tokyo, Japan, on Aug. 2, 2021. (Toru Hanai/Getty Images)

  The Chinese women’s volleyball team won successive international championships after 1981. In fact, Luo Weiwei, a doctor for the Chinese women’s volleyball team, has been studying the use of doping since 1980.

  In 1982, Luo published two articles on iron tablets (ferrous sulfate) for athletes in the Chinese journal Sports Science, naming Lang Ping, the famous Chinese women’s volleyball player, as the one who took the doping.

  “She [Lang Ping] was only in her 20s in the 1980s, so how could she afford to fight the system’s demand for taking doping? “said Yang.

  Those athletes take 600-800 mg a day and cannot digest the iron, which will be deposited in their bodies for many years before health problems arise. And some who have doped suffered side effects such as unexplained headaches, body aches and pains, and sports injuries that would not otherwise occur, Yang said.

  An average person’s daily intake of iron is about 11.5–18.9 mg based on different age stages and gender, data by the U.S. National Institutes of Health shows.

  In November 1987, Xue published an article in a gymnastics magazine, analyzing the case of Li Donghua, who was an athlete of the Chinese gymnastics team, after doping continuously for one month. One day, he ruptured his Achilles tendons in both feet when he did a backflip and landed. According to Xue, this is a side effect of doping: the blood vessel walls become very fragile and the Achilles tendons rupture with the slightest external force.

  

  Liu Xiang of China gets assisted off the track after getting injured in the Men’s 110m Hurdles Round 1 Heats on Day 11 of the London 2012 Olympic Games at Olympic Stadium in London, England, on Aug. 7, 2012. (Stu Forster/Getty Images)

  In 2008, Chinese athlete Liu Xiang, the world’s first Grand Slam athlete in the 110m hurdles, ruptured his Achilles tendon. Xue found, through Liu’s entire description of treatment, that it was the same cause as Li’s case.

  Artificial Insemination for Androgens, Abortion After Winning a Medal

  Besides having athletes dope, Yang also recalled a case about the CCP enhancing athletes’ androgens through artificial insemination. In 1995, Deng Yaping, a multiple world champion in table tennis, was artificially inseminated before competing in a world championship. After getting pregnant, her body’s androgen level increased, and then she had an abortion after the tournament.

  

  China’s Den Yaping in action against South Korean Kim Hyon Hui (not pictured) during the women’s team event at the World Table Tennis Championships in Manchester on April 29, 1997. (Bob Collier/AFP via Getty Images)

  As the revelation was too shocking, Epoch Times reporters asked experts and athletes for professional advice.

  Mr. Yu, a former Chinese cyclist living in New Zealand, said pregnancy does increase the number of androgens in the body. But once the female athlete has an abortion, her body goes down also, which is actually a very cruel way to tap into the human body’s potential.

  Yu said he was not surprised to learn that because he heard of similar brutal methods, such as the blood exchange method commonly used in cycling and similar endurance competitions.

  Dr. Yang Si, a medical doctor at the University of Tokyo, told The Epoch Times that he had not heard of this method, but it is possible that after a woman is pregnant, many compounds are produced in the blood, and these substances may mask the ingredients of those stimulants.

  Dr. Yang further explained that because stimulants are also organic compounds, if the compound produced after pregnancy is close to the stimulant taken, then it can mask the performance-enhancing drug. The testers would think it is caused by pregnancy, which is called a “false positive” in medical science and it’s very common.

  If there are specialized biologists to study what substances women produce after pregnancy, it is also possible to choose the same kind of stimulant to make athletes take, Dr. Yang said.

  Xue’s Family Suffered From the CCP’s Persecution for Decades

  Xue, 84, was part of the first generation of sports medicine experts after the CCP founded its regime, serving as the doctor for the national team in the 1980s. Since the late 1970s, when the Communist Party launched its state-sponsored doping craze, Xue has been a rare public opponent of the system. On the eve of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Xue refused to administer stimulants to sports stars such as Li Ning. As a result, Xue and her family suffered decades of suppression from authorities.

  

  Xue Yinxian participated in the 1988 Seoul Olympics with the Chinese national team. (Courtesy of Xue Yinxian)

  In December 2007, Yang’s father died after being attacked at his home by the General Administration of Sport, and in 2015, Yang was arrested for protesting his father’s death to the administration. In 2016, Xue became seriously ill but failed to receive medical treatment. In 2017, Xue, her son, and her daughter-in-law escaped from China and arrived in Germany, and chose to go into exile.

  In the interview, Yang told Radio Free Asia that his mother’s courage to criticize and resist was due to her professional ethics as a doctor.

  “She was thinking that the athletes were taking stimulants that would cause physical damage to these young children 20 years later.”

  Epoch Times reporters couldn’t reach the athletes mentioned in the article, and several calls to the phone number listed on the website of China’s General Administration of Sports went unanswered.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 23:00

• The Most Dangerous Job In America… Is Not Frontline Healthcare Worker Or Teacher
  The Most Dangerous Job In America… Is Not Frontline Healthcare Worker Or Teacher

  Fishermen and hunters are officially the most dangerous jobs in the US, according to the 2020 census released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics last month. The group saw 132.1 fatalities for every 100,000 full-time equivalent workers; a stark contrast to the overall worker fatality rate across all industries of 3.4 deaths.

  As Statista’s Mathias Brandt shows in the chart below, delivery and truck drivers came lower on the list, despite the fact that 887 people died on the job in 2020 alone – the highest absolute figure on the graph. This comes down to the fact there are so many people in this profession, pushing the proportional risk of harm lower.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Taking a step back, in the entire year of 2020, 4,764 people were killed on the job in the U.S. That’s an average of 13 people dying each day, or one worker dying every 111 minutes.

  This figure represents the lowest rate of deaths since 2013.

  As Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of U.S. unions, explains on CNBC, much of this change is credited to the coronavirus pandemic which “meant fewer people were in direct contact with preventable hazards, production priorities shifted and businesses were forced to do more prevention planning.”

  Those who continued to work on site, and subsequently were at greater risk of injury, proved to be disproportionately Hispanic or Latino and Black workers, with 4.5 and 3.5 deaths respectively. Deaths of Hispanic or Latino workers have been on the rise in the past years.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 22:30

• Leveraged Trading Is Not The Source Of Recent Crypto Weakness: So What Is?
  Leveraged Trading Is Not The Source Of Recent Crypto Weakness: So What Is?

  By Marcel Kasumovich, One River Asset Management head of research

  Macro narratives are driving digital asset sentiment, from asset swings to regulatory decisions. This alone speaks to a maturing ecosystem – investors want the macro story. But digital asset volatility has been mostly uncorrelated to other macro markets in the recent past. It is more about a shift in investor behavior.

  1/ As digital assets enter the mainstream, market commentary focuses on price. And in a world where exchange rate volatility is near all-time lows, attention has naturally shifted to digital assets where volatility against the US dollar is breathtaking by comparison. The megatrend towards the digitalization of finance will not be defined by the shorter-term gyrations. The innovation happening more behind the scenes will dictate the secular formations. Recent advancements in the Lightning Network illustrate the quiet determination to digitalize finance.

  2/ The Lightning Network was proposed in 2015 as a way of scaling smaller payments, able to accommodate billions of transactions in a second (here). It addressed the tiring argument of Bitcoin’s inefficiency head-on. And after a slow start, user adoption surged last year with a 3-fold rise in network capacity (Figure 1). It is also integrating into the regulatory mainstream. This week, Bottlepay, a payment provider built on the Lightning Network, was approved by the UK Financial Conduct Authority. These new technologies can hold up to regulatory standards including anti-money laundering (here). It is a powerful example of technologists and regulators working together to encourage innovation in a complacent legacy system.

  3/ Innovation may drive the megatrends, but investors are still left to manage and explain portfolio volatility from digital assets. And just as digital innovation is garnering more institutional attention, so too are the narratives around the volatility of digital assets. Investors are looking for macro thematic narratives, including the sharp downturn since November and the abrupt decline to start the year. Explanations center on the downturn in inflation expectations, the Fed pivot toward faster rate hikes and balance sheet normalization, as well as the decline in growth stocks tied to the rise in real interest rates. The high correlation of bitcoin returns to inflation expectations last year (56%) reinforces a desire to put a tidy macro narrative to the digital ecosystem.

  4/ But the analytics tell a different story. We run a simple empirical exercise to evaluate bitcoin returns as explained by three macro factors: market-based inflation expectations (5y5y inflation swaps), the inflation-adjusted terminal policy rate (5y5y overnight interest rate swap less 5y5y inflation swaps), and Nasdaq 100 equity returns. These factors only explain 10-45% of the variation in bitcoin over the past two years and with various representations of the data. More importantly, there is almost no relevance of these factors in explaining the bitcoin downturn since November. Those factors would imply a bitcoin price of 50-60k, much higher than the current price.

  5/ What does that mean for investors? Digital assets volatility has been largely independent of macro factors in the recent past. To be sure, the independent volatility that most investors hope for is skewed to the upside. But in assets where volatility expectations have ranged from 55% to 158% in the past two years, there will be plenty of periods where idiosyncratic moves detract from a portfolio. The test for any investor is asking about the structural trends. What tokens will prosper with the digitalization of finance? How broad will token pluralism extend? If the answers to the structural questions are positive, then downside volatility should be met with programmatic rebalancing into digital assets.

  6/ Of course, idiosyncratic volatility is not satisfying. It is a polite way of saying we need to dig deeper for an explanation. What is behind the swings in digital assets if the macro narrative falls flat? The hunt for the explanation is partly a process of elimination and partly identifying new patterns of behavior. There are three key elements of the market microstructure of interest.

  7/ First, the bitcoin forward yield curve has been stable, indicating leveraged trading is not a source of downside volatility. Figure 2 illustrates the one-month annualized yield implied by bitcoin futures on the Deribit exchange, where leverage is more readily available to traders. A rise in speculative demand leads to higher forward bitcoin prices and higher implied yields (vice versa). In periods of excess leverage, forward prices fall more than spot as speculative traders forced to close positions at unfavorable prices. Last May, one-month yields fell to an annualized –75%, reflecting a costly, steep inversion of the forward curve to speculative long traders. On this downturn, the compression in yields is barely visible.

  8/ Second, option markets have decoupled from previous correlations to spot prices, with declining volatility expectations. The one-week implied volatility on Ether is 70%, near the lows of the past year (Figure 3). Ordinarily, declines in spot prices, particularly severe ones, would have seen a surge in volatility expectations. However, volatility is low despite a sharp decline in spot prices. The same pattern is evident in 25-delta put-call volatility skew. The one-week skew in Ether options is only marginally positive, near the average of the past year. This is strongly counter to past downturns in spot prices, where option skew spiked well above 40%! Again, leveraged trading is not the source of the recent price weakness.

  9/ Third, a rise in the dispersion of digital asset prices hints at a change in investor behavior. We illustrate this point with a unique parsing of the data based on the last two downturns: May 8, 2021 and Nov 9, 2021. Dispersion is measured by the median difference between the individual returns on the 12 assets of our Core Index and bitcoin returns. When Index asset returns are evenly dispersed around bitcoin returns, the measure is zero. The one-month dispersion in the latest downturn measures near-zero (–0.4%). This is vastly different from May 2021, where the one-month dispersion index measured –9.1%. Index assets exhibited higher beta to the bitcoin downturn. No doubt, two cyclical periods don’t make a trend, but it does call for attention.

  10/ Market behavior is bifurcating. It is evident in futures markets, where the decline in yields has been greater in regulated markets (CME) than in unregulated ones (Deribit). It is evident in active supply, where the percentage of longer-term holders has dropped alongside a more-than 20% fall in large-value bitcoin addresses (greater than $10mn). It is evident in the surge of interest in venture applications (here). Investors focused on macro narratives have mattered more than leveraged traders. And it is these ebbs and flows that should remind investors that we are at the very early stages in the digitalization of finance. It is precisely in those imperfect, inefficient early stages where megatrend assets are most additive to a portfolio.

  Figure 1 – Lightning Network Capacity Surge, Adoption Rising

  

  Figure 2 – Bitcoin Futures’ Yield Stable, No Sign of Speculative Excess

  

  Figure 3 – Ether Volatility Low Despite Declining Prices

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 22:00

• China Unexpectedly Cuts Key Rate, Adds Liquidity As Economic Growth Slowed, Retail Sales Slump
  China Unexpectedly Cuts Key Rate, Adds Liquidity As Economic Growth Slowed, Retail Sales Slump

  A busy night started with weakness in US equity futures (Nasdaq down 0.5%) and an unexpected cut in a key China policy rate and a modest addition of liquidity. This was then followed by a mixed bag of China macro with a GDP beat (but slowing growth) but ugly retail sales disappointment. All of which sent the Yuan lower…

  

  As Bloomberg reports, China lowered a key interest rate for the first time since the peak of the pandemic in 2020 as a property-market slump and repeated virus outbreaks dampened the nation’s growth outlook. The People’s Bank of China cut the rate on its one-year policy loans by 10 basis points to 2.85%. That’s the first reduction since April 2020. It also slashed the rate on the seven-day reverse repurchase agreements by the same magnitude to 2.1%.

  

  The central bank made the move while offering 700 billion yuan ($110 billion) via the medium-term lending facility, exceeding the 500 billion yuan coming due. It added 100 billion yuan with seven-day reverse repos.

  “The PBOC has accelerated its pace of policy easing in order to guide borrowing costs lower and to encourage credit supply,” said Yewei Yang, an analyst at Guosheng Securities Co.

  “The move suggests China’s economic is weak and it will trigger a significant slide in borrowing costs.”

  The cut to policy rates indicates the PBOC is taking easier stance to deal with economic downward pressures which were reflected somewhat in a mixed set of data from China that showed growth slowing (albeit better than expected) and retail sales notably disappointing.

  • China 4Q GDP Grows 4% Y/Y; Est. 3.3%, but notably below Q3’s +4.9%

  • China Dec. Industrial Output Rises 4.3% Y/Y; Est. 3.7%

  • China Jan.-Dec. Fixed Investment Rises 4.9% Y/Y; Est. 4.8%

  • China Jan.-Dec. GDP Grows 8.1% Y/Y; Est. 8%

  • China End-Dec. Survey Jobless Rate Rises to 5.1% vs 5.0% Prior

  • China Dec. Retail Sales Rise 1.7% Y/Y; Est. 3.8%

  As is clear in the chart below, all of the key macro measures worsened…

  

  As Bloomberg’s Enda Curran notes, the retail sales weakness looks broad based. There was a big decline in sales of household electronics and automobiles and also contraction for restaurant/catering, clothing, jewelry and furniture. Given the news through January regarding the virus outbreaks, one wonders if that can turn around materially in the near term. The annual new years holiday would be an obvious boost in other years, but less clear how it plays out this year.

  

  On a seasonally adjusted month/month basis, China’s retail sales rose in just four months last year. Even during 2020’s pandemic impacts, there were five months of such sales growth.

  On top of the big miss for retail sales, online shopping shows more worrying signs for the country’s weakening consumer demand. Online retail sales grew 14.1% in 2021, the slowest annual pace since 2014.

  Chang Shu and David Qu, economists at Bloomberg Economics, say the bigger-than-expected cut to the one-year MLF rate shows it’s serious about supporting the economy.

  We give the final words to Peiqian Liu, an economist at NatWest Markets:

  This is a decisive dovish tilt as the policymakers acknowledged the importance to stabilize short term growth.

  The rate cut may translate into a broad-based 10bps lower in 1Y and 5Y LPR on Thursday.

  In terms of our outlook for monetary policy in 2022, we think the PBOC will unlikely resort to “flood-style stimulus” of consecutive and aggressive rate cuts. Instead, we see room for moderate easing with another 20bps rate cut and 100bps RRR cut for the rest of this year.

  

  US equity futures extended their losses despite the MLF rate cut…

  

  The stock market reaction to the PBOC’s interest rate cut is relatively muted because “the latest cut seems to be in line with the targeted pro-growth policy guidance for 2022 as highlighted by the key economic working group,” says Kelvin Wong, analyst at CMC Markets

  One last thing of note, China’s stats folks say the country’s population was about 500,000 people more at year’s end than a year earlier (albeit a rounding error), but it signals that China hasn’t gotten to peak population just yet apparently.

  

  So, as we pointed out in December, it is now clear that China is shifting to an easing mode as the rest of the world is shifting to a tightening cycle.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 21:28

• Walmart Creates Its Own Cryptocurrency, NFTs, Enters Metaverse With Sales Of Virtual Goods
  Walmart Creates Its Own Cryptocurrency, NFTs, Enters Metaverse With Sales Of Virtual Goods

  The last time Walmart was reportedly entering the crypto space, it turned out to be a giant Litecoin-promoting hack, that was quickly reversed, after it became clear that playful hackers had fabricated a press release. But there appears to be nothing fake about the latest news involving Walmart’s desire to ride the latest wave of crypto/web 3.0/metaverse/NFT euphoria, and as a result the big box retailer is boldly venturing into the metaverse with plans to create its own cryptocurrency and collection of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.

  According to CNBC, Walmart filed several new trademarks late last month that indicate its intent to make and sell virtual goods, including electronics, home decorations, toys, sporting goods and personal care products. In a separate filing, the company said it would offer users a virtual currency, as well as NFTs.  In total, seven separate applications have been submitted.

  

  The patent applications were among a flurry the company filed on Dec. 30, including three under “Walmart Connect” – the name of the company’s existing digital advertising venture – for a financial exchange for virtual currency and advertising. Applications also were filed for “Verse to Store,” “Verse to Curb” and “Verse to Home” for shopping services. It’s also seeking trademarks to apply the Walmart name and “fireworks” logo to heath-care services and education in virtual and augmented reality.

  “They’re super intense,” said Josh Gerben, a trademark attorney, quoted by CNBC. “There’s a lot of language in these, which shows that there’s a lot of planning going on behind the scenes about how they’re going to address cryptocurrency, how they’re going to address the metaverse and the virtual world that appears to be coming or that’s already here.”

  Gerben said that ever since Facebook announced it was changing its company name to Meta, signaling its ambitions beyond social media, businesses have been rushing to figure out how they will fit into a virtual world.

  

  The applications represent a significant step for the retail giant as it studies how to participate in the metaverse, a virtual world that blends aspects of digital technologies. Walmart dropped a hint to what was coming, after it advertised in August a position to develop “the digital currency strategy and product roadmap” while identifying “crypto-related investment and partnerships,” according to a job posting on the company’s website.

  “Walmart is continuously exploring how emerging technologies may shape future shopping experiences,” the company responded in an emailed statement. “We don’t have anything further to share today, but it’s worth noting we routinely file trademark applications as part of the innovation process.”

  Walmart’s cryptocurrency plans were the subject of a high-profile hoax in September, when a fake announcement caused a short-lived surge in Litecoin, a relatively obscure cryptocurrency. According to the faked news release, Walmart would start letting its customers pay with Litecoin.

  In October, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer started a pilot program in which shoppers can buy Bitcoin at Coinstar kiosks in some of its U.S. stores. The test with Coinstar, which is known for the machines that let customers exchange U.S. coins for paper bills or gift cards, includes 200 kiosks in Walmart stores.

  In early December, Walmart Chief Financial Officer Brett Biggs said at an analyst conference that the company was open to allowing shoppers to pay in cryptocurrency if customers demand it, but the company didn’t see a need to rush out any capabilities.

  Walmart is the latest brand to jump on the bandwagon of selling virtual goods and/or NFTs. In November, Nike filed a slew of trademark applications that previewed its plans to sell virtual branded sneakers and apparel. Later that month, it said it was teaming up with Roblox to create an online world called Nikeland. In December, it bought the virtual sneaker company RTFKT (pronounced “artifact”) for an undisclosed amount.

  “All of a sudden, everyone is like, ‘This is becoming super real and we need to make sure our IP is protected in the space,’” said Gerben.

  Others are also piling in: Gap has started selling NFTs of its iconic logo sweatshirts. The apparel maker said its NFTs will be priced in tiers ranging from roughly $8.30 to $415, and come with a physical hoodie. Meantime, both Under Armour’s and Adidas’ NFT debuts sold out last month. They’re now fetching sky-high prices on the NFT marketplace OpenSea.

  Gerben said that apparel retailers Urban Outfitters, Ralph Lauren and Abercrombie & Fitch have also filed trademarks in recent weeks detailing their intent to open some sort of virtual store.

  A report from CB Insights outlined some of the reasons why retailers and brands might want to make such ventures, which can potentially offer new revenue streams. Launching NFTs allows for businesses to tokenize physical products and services to help reduce online transaction costs, it said. And for luxury brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton, NFTs can serve as a form of authentication for tangible and more expensive goods, CB Insights noted.

  As the following chart from JPM shows, the NFT space has been red hot in the past year, and the market cap of the NFT universe has never been higher even though crytpocurrencies have tumbled by more than 40% in the past 2 months as institutions dumped the best performing assets of 2021 ahead of widely telegraphed Fed tightening.

  

  Launching NFTs allows for businesses to tokenize physical products and services to help reduce online transaction costs, it said. And for luxury brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton, NFTs can serve as a form of authentication for tangible and more expensive goods, CB Insights noted.

  Gerben said that as more consumers familiarize themselves with the metaverse and items stored on the blockchain, more retailers will want to create their own ecosystem around it. And after all, while it is the view of the World Economic Forum that after the Great Reset “you will own nothing, and you will be happy”, nobody said that one can’t own virtual goods in the coming dystopian future.

  

  Quoted by CNBC, Frank Chaparro, director at crypto information services firm The Block, said that many retailers are still reeling from being late to e-commerce, so they don’t want to miss out on any opportunities in the metaverse.

  “I think it’s a win-win for any company in retail,” Chaparro said. “And even if it just turns out to be a fad there’s not a lot of reputation damage in just trying something weird out like giving some customers an NFT in a sweepstake, for instance.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 21:00

• After 28 Days On Ventilator, Family Loses Legal Battle To Try Ivermectin, Other Alternative Treatments, For Dying Father
  After 28 Days On Ventilator, Family Loses Legal Battle To Try Ivermectin, Other Alternative Treatments, For Dying Father

  Authored by Nanette Holt via The Epoch Times,

  A Florida family fighting to give their loved one on a ventilator alternative treatments for COVID-19 have lost another battle—this time in Florida’s First District Court of Appeal.

  

  The wife and son of Daniel Pisano first squared off against Mayo Clinic Florida at an emergency hearing on Dec. 30 in Florida’s Fourth Judicial Circuit. Before that, they’d been begging the hospital to allow them to try treating Pisano—who’s been on a ventilator now for 28 days—with the controversial drug ivermectin, along with a mix of other drugs and supplements, part of a protocol recommended by the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC).

  The family’s request for an emergency injunction to force the Mayo Clinic to allow treatments recommended by an outside doctor was denied by Judge Marianne Aho. They appealed the decision.

  On Jan. 14, Aho’s decision was upheld by Florida’s First District Court of Appeal. The three-judge panel deciding the case included Judge Thomas “Bo” Winokur, appointed by then-Gov. Rick Scott in 2015; Judge M. Kemmerly Thomas, appointed in 2016 by Scott; and Judge Robert E. Long, Jr., appointed in 2020, by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

  “An opinion of this Court explaining its reasoning will follow,” the judges stated in the order they issued. 

  “So we wait to see what that looks like, unless it takes too long,” said Jeff Childers, an attorney for the family. 

  Seventy-year-old Daniel Pisano doesn’t have unlimited time, says Eduardo Balbona, M.D., an independent doctor in Jacksonville who’s been advising the family since they reached out to him while researching other treatments that could potentially help their loved one.

  

  Daniel and Claudia Pisano moved to Florida and bought a homesite to be 20 minutes from their only two grandchildren. (Photo courtesy of Chris Pisano)

  Balbona, who has been monitoring Pisano’s treatment at the Mayo Clinic through an online portal, testified on behalf of the Pisano family in the first hearing.

  The Mayo Clinic has argued that the treatment plan doesn’t fit with the hospital’s standard protocol for treating COVID-19 patients and they don’t know what the effects of following Balbona’s recommendations would be. The hospital has told the family that Pisano has a less-than-five percent chance of survival, and all that’s left to do is wait and see if he recovers on the ventilator. The Mayo Clinic has not responded to requests for comment.

  The family has begged the Mayo Clinic to simply step aside and let Balbona try what he thinks could work. But the Mayo Clinic doesn’t allow outside doctors to treat patients.

  Since media reports mentioned his involvement in the case, particularly his confidence in recommending ivermectin, Balbona has faced a mix of hate-filled criticism and desperate cries for help.

  He says he’s used ivermectin along with the rest of the FLCCC protocol successfully with minor modifications, on “dozens and dozens” of seriously ill patients suffering the effects of COVID-19. Some of those patients have come to him from as far away as California.

  He’s not alone in his belief in ivermectin and the mix of drugs and supplements he’s suggesting. Different health care professionals across the country have spoken out over the past two years about the efficacy of using ivermectin and the FLCCC protocol to treat COVID-19.

  The drug has been used for 40 years and won a Nobel Prize for its creator. While ivermectin is most often used to prevent or kill parasites in animals, it has also been widely and successfully used for years to treat parasites and viruses in humans in the United States and other countries. There is an ever-growing list of peer-reviewed studies showing the drug’s efficacy in treating COVID-19.

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) indicates there are ongoing clinical trials investigating the use of the drug in the treatment of COVID-19 on a webpage warning people not to self-medicate with ivermectin. The FDA published a tweet in August mocking those who do. And some politicians and media outlets have railed relentlessly against those claiming ivermectin could be an effective and inexpensive way to combat COVID-19.

  

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) shared this tweet on Aug. 21, 2021, mocking the use of the drug ivermectin in the treatment of COVID-19. (Photo courtesy of FDA via Twitter)

  “You should be embarrassed to practice medicine, to sue the Mayo Clinic to get horse medicine to a human being, because of Internet garbage,” one person seethed on a voicemail at Balbona’s office after his court testimony was mentioned in an Epoch Times article.

  “Your license should be revoked, you worthless piece of garbage. You are killing people, not helping them, and to harass the Mayo Clinic, because you are not good enough to be their doctor is disgusting. Disgusting. You and doctors like you should all be banned from society. Shame on you. Disgusting. Goodbye and good riddance. I hope you get COVID. Goodbye.”

  Balbona says he deletes messages like that and pushes on with his treatment of patients.

  It’s “just the intolerance and hatred that takes me by surprise,” he said, about his office communications now getting “flooded by hate.”

  

  Eduardo Balbona, M.D., completed specialty training in internal medicine at the National Naval Medical Center and served as a physician at the U.S. Capitol, caring for senators, congressmen and Supreme Court justices. (Photo courtesy of Eduardo Balbona, M.D.)

  “Everything I do treating COVID is directed at lowering the inflammatory response, which is out of control, and improving blood flow to the lungs, and avoiding the complications of clots,” he said.

  “Perhaps the biggest change I’ve made from protocols in the hospital and with FLCCC is increasing the dose of dexamethasone. The dose of dexamethasone in FLCCC is relatively low at 6 mg, and I generally increase that to 18 mg daily in more serious cases. That’s a logic change, and I realize the study support is at 6 mg.”

  “There’s a reason for every medicine and everything I do treating COVID with my protocol. I have to be able to defend it since I know it will be attacked. Crazy world we’re in.”

  Christie DeTrude, of Switzerland, Florida, feels certain that Balbona’s recommendations saved her husband, Dewey. He had just retired last spring at 59 after a long career as a pipe-fitter. At 200 pounds and 6-feet-tall, he was in the peak of health, with strong “country muscles after a lifetime of turning a wrench,” she said.

  

  Dewey and Christie DeTrude on vacation in Hawaii, before he fell ill with COVID-19. (Courtesy of the DeTrude Family)

  When he sought treatment for COVID-19 at an urgent-care clinic in July, he was prescribed ivermectin by a doctor there.

  “But what we didn’t know at the time was, it wasn’t a high enough dose, because it’s supposed to be weight-based,” Christie DeTrude said. “Theirs was a very low dose, and they discontinued it after five days and said that it would be damaging to his liver and kidneys if they continued, which isn’t true.”

  On his eighth day of illness, he had developed pneumonia, and the urgent-care clinic told him to go to the hospital for treatment with convalescent plasma and oxygen. The referring doctor promised he wouldn’t be admitted, Christie DeTrude said.

  When she dropped him off at the Mayo Clinic Florida emergency room, she was told to come back and pick him up in 4-5 hours.

  “Once he got to Mayo, they just completely took over, and there was no informed consent,” DeTrude said. “There was no giving him information and letting us make a decision. They made all of his decisions for him, and they follow a standard protocol.”

  “There were no choices, there was no discussion…they just kept upping the oxygen,” DeTrude said.

  The Mayo Clinic did not return requests for comment by The Epoch Times about DeTrude’s case, Pisano’s case, or COVID-19 treatment protocols, in general.

  DeTrude said that eventually, her husband had become so weak, he couldn’t get out of the hospital bed. She felt that the hospital’s treatments weren’t working. She wanted to take him home. The hospital wouldn’t agree to discharge him and didn’t allow her to visit, she said.

  

  Dewey DeTrude’s wife hired an attorney to help her get her husband out of the intensive care unit at Mayo Clinic Florida, so he could be treated at home with ivermectin. DeTrude, shown here on Aug. 3, 2021, spent 46 days in the hospital. (Courtesy of the DeTrude Family)

  Days passed. Then, weeks. She says that she could tell from their phone calls that her husband was getting weaker. His 60th birthday came and went. And still, she says the hospital wouldn’t let her visit.

  “I was able to get a Catholic priest to come give him Last Rites, and the priest said that my husband’s mental state was like that of a prisoner of war, that he was definitely suffering trauma from the isolation from family, from his faith, from not seeing the sun. He’d lost 35 pounds,” she said.

  Part of the problem was that she wasn’t allowed to bring him vegan meals, she said.

  “A lot of the food, my husband wasn’t interested in. And when you’re on oxygen, it does affect your appetite, and he needed assistance eating, but they wouldn’t let me be that person,” she said.

  After 18 days, Christie DeTrude hired an attorney to help her push the hospital to stabilize her husband so she could take him home. Meanwhile, she searched for an outside doctor who could help.

  With that aim, she attended a medical freedom rally in Jacksonville in August, hoping to find something or someone who could advise her. Several doctors spoke about alternative treatments for COVID-19 that hospitals weren’t using, including ivermectin.

  The next day, she called them all. Only Dr. Balbona came to the phone to speak with her, she said.

  At Christie DeTrude’s request, Balbona promised the hospital that he’d take over her husband’s care. He ordered oxygen, medication, and home-health assistance for the family, she said.

  As she waited for Mayo doctors to agree to discharge him, Christie DeTrude prayed every day that her husband could hang on a little longer.

  After 46 days at Mayo Clinic, Dewey DeTrude finally was discharged and immediately started following Dr. Balbona’s instructions, taking ivermectin, fluvoxamine to prevent blood clots, and propranolol to treat anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder from his hospital stay. He also took Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and zinc. He ate healthy food and spent time in the sunshine. Within days, it was clear her husband was on the mend, Christie DeTrude said.

  Now, four months later, “he’s working part-time, going to the gym,” she said. “He’s completed physical therapy and working on rebuilding his stamina and lung capacity. And if it weren’t for Dr. Balbona, I’m quite sure he would have died in the hospital.”

  Gene Bennett, a 77-year-old retired field engineer for IBM, tells a similar story.

  He was enjoying life in Bryceville, Florida helping his son clear five acres of land for a homesite when COVID-19 struck in January 2021.

  An ambulance transported him to Ascension St. Vincent’s Riverside Hospital in Jacksonville, where he was treated with remdesivir.

  “They had to keep getting my oxygen higher and higher,” Bennett said. “I was finally up to the point of seven liters per minute, which is almost pure oxygen. And I knew that I wasn’t getting better. I could tell I was getting weaker and weaker. So when the doctor made his rounds on the Monday morning, I said, ‘This is my last day of remdesivir treatment and I know that I’m not improving. What’s our next step?’

  “He looked at me and very calmly said, ‘Mr. Bennett, we don’t have a next step.’ He said, ‘We have done all for you that we can do. There’s nothing else we can do for you.’”

  

  Gene Bennett insisted on leaving the hospital, instead of going on a ventilator. (Courtesy of Jane Bennett)

  Overnight, Bennett thought a lot about the conversation. The next day, he asked the doctor, “Are you serious? There’s nothing else that this hospital can do for me?”

  “He said, ‘No, sir. The next step is for you to go on a ventilator.’”

  “Well, I’m not going to do that,” Bennett recalls saying. “I want to be released from this hospital.”

  He quickly learned that was no longer a decision he could make for himself.

  Ascension St. Vincent’s Riverside Hospital did not respond to a request for comment.

  “They weren’t going to release me because I was on a high level of oxygen,” he told The Epoch Times. “So finally, after I raised hell with them, to put it mildly, all day, my son picked me up” that evening.

  The next morning, Bennett’s wife drove him to Dr. Balbona, his physician for many years. Balbona came out to the parking lot of his office to help him out of the car.

  “I could barely walk with a walker without assistance — that’s how bad off I was,” Bennett said. He says Balbona told him, ” You have the most severe case of COVID that I have seen. But I have a medicine I have been using and I’ve had great success with it.”

  Bennett needed no convincing.

  “What is it? I’ll take it,” Bennett recalls saying. “I know I’m dying. I just feel it.”

  “He told me and my wife, ‘Most people that have COVID as severe as you do not survive. We’re behind the curve, but we’re going to try to get you over the hump. The medicine I’d like to prescribe for you is normally a heartworm medicine for dogs—that’s the most common use.’

  “He said, ‘They use it all over the world. It’s been around for 40 years, and it’s dirt cheap, but very effective.’

  “He said, ‘I would never, ever give a patient a medicine that I thought would be harmful to them.’ And I totally believed, and just accepted the fact he was doing what he thinks was right.

  “I thought, I don’t have any options. I know if I don’t take something to stop this, it’s going to kill me.”

  They picked up a $30 supply of ivermectin from a drug store that day. Bennett was so weak, he could barely feed himself. His wife and son later told him that they thought he was going to die.

  But after five days on what Dr. Balbona prescribed, including Vitamin C, Vitamin D, zinc, steroids, and a diuretic to get fluid off his lungs, he started to improve.

  “I’m a firm believer and I’d swear on the Bible, had I not been prescribed ivermectin, I would have died. Had I not stepped out of St. Vincent’s and checked myself out and gone to him and got the ivermectin, I wouldn’t be talking to you today. It saved my life. And for how much money? Thirty dollars!”

  He has since read a lot of research about the efficacy of ivermectin in the treatment of COVID-19.

  

  Gene Bennett refused to go on a ventilator when he was seriously ill with COVID-19. After leaving the hospital, his doctor treated him with ivermectin. He made a full recovery.  (Courtesy of Jane Bennett)

  “I can’t tell you if it is 100 percent effective for everyone, but I can tell you it was for me. I personally cannot understand why the government balks at giving these treatments. Why don’t they make the announcement that it’s available and let it be an individual’s choice?”

  Ivermectin has been approved for the treatment of COVID-19 in all or part of 22 countries.

  Over the past year, Bennett’s gotten back to full health, almost, regaining about half of the 45 pounds he lost while he was ill.

  His wife’s brother died in early January of COVID-19. They begged the hospital to try ivermectin. The hospital declined.

  His daughter-in-law’s mother died of COVID-19, too, in a Jacksonville Beach hospital, after the family begged to try ivermectin, and the hospital refused, Bennett said.

  An FDA spokeswoman said she would provide the number of reports of patients who had problems after self-medicating with ivermectin. Three days later, that information had not been provided to The Epoch Times.

  The FDA Office of Media Affairs said a formal request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) would be required to obtain details about when ivermectin might be approved for use in treating COVID-19, and about bonafide injuries to people who’ve used ivermectin to treat the illness.

  “The most effective ways to limit the spread of COVID-19 include getting a COVID-19 vaccine when it is available to you and following current CDC guidance,” the FDA’s website advises.

  The Epoch Times spoke to a dozen people who have used ivermectin formulated for humans to treat COVID-19 at home. Most obtained prescriptions for the drug through online medical services. None reported having any side effects, even those who admitted to using ivermectin formulated for animals.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 20:30

• Quantifying The World's Most Powerful Militaries
  Quantifying The World’s Most Powerful Militaries

  When it comes to manpower, no military in the world comes close to that of China.

  

  According to Global Firepower estimates, the People’s Republic has around 2 million active military personnel. The United States in comparison, has significantly less – 1.4 million – but when assessing the overall power of the world’s military forces, the U.S. comes out on top, ahead of Russia and China in second and third, respectively.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  With Russian military build up around Ukraine and increasingly aggressive posturing from the Kremlin, the chances of at least one of the world’s most powerful militaries applying its strength in a major new conflict appear to be at their highest for some time. Diplomatic efforts have so far failed, and it now remains to be seen how Russia will act. Elsewhere, the risk of China and the United States clashing in some form over Taiwan remains ever-present.

  The index “utilizes over 50 individual factors to determine a given nation’s PowerIndex score with categories ranging from military might and financials to logistical capability and geography.” While a rating of 0.000 would represent the perfect score, it is considered realistically unattainable.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 20:00

• Morgan Stanley: As The Fed's Balance Sheet Runoff Begins, The Withdrawal Of Liquidity Will Have Profound Impacts
  Morgan Stanley: As The Fed’s Balance Sheet Runoff Begins, The Withdrawal Of Liquidity Will Have Profound Impacts

  By Vishwanath Tirupattur, head of Quantitative Research at Morgan Stanley

  The Devil Is in the Details

  The first two weeks of the year have reinforced the key message from our 2022 Strategy Outlook – the policy training wheels are indeed coming off, and fast! The hawkish shift in the minutes of the FOMC’s December meeting, reinforced by the rhetoric from a number of Fed officials, signals policy tightening through more hikes. They are coming sooner than expected, and the timeline between the first rate hike and the beginning of balance sheet runoff will be compressed. Our economists now expect the Fed to deliver four 25bp hikes this year, at its March, June, September,and December meetings, in addition to an August start for the balance sheet runoff announced last July. Market pricing already reflects this hawkish shift, with the March liftoff nearly fully priced in along with 3-4 hikes in the subsequent 12 months.

  

  Given the size of the Fed’s balance sheet (US$8.2trillion, consisting of US$5.6 trillion in Treasuries of varying maturities and US$2.6 trillion of agency MBS), the runoff has important market implications. However, quantifying its impact is far from straightforward. One could look to the balance sheet expansion in the post-GFC years with the view that if the buildup lowered interest rates, the runoff should have the opposite effect. A rule of thumb (with a lot of handwaving) suggests a 4-6bp change in the 10-year interest rate from a US$100 billion change in the balance sheet. However, we would argue that the market effects are unlikely to be symmetric and a simple sign reversal between the buildup and the runoff ignores the complexity of the modalities. We expect different impacts for Treasuries and agency MBS, given the different ways they were acquired during the buildup and the share of the Fed’s holdings in their respective markets.

  During the balance sheet buildup, Treasury securities were predominantly acquired through the US Treasury’s new issue process. The Fed consciously decided how much duration to take out of the market by picking securities with varying maturities. In contrast, we expect the balance sheet runoff to be implemented by allowing securities to mature without reinvestment. That means the impact on the yield curve depends on how the Treasury responds to its increased issuance needs as the Fed decreases its Treasury holdings. Our interest rate strategists estimate that US Treasury issuance needs will rise by ~US$850 billion by the end of 2023and ~US$1,300 billion by the end of 2024. If we assume that the Treasury follows the advice of the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, the optimal targets for increased issuance would be at the 7-year and 10-year points of the yield curve. Consequently, our strategists now forecast 10-year rates to reach 2.30% by the end of 2022.

  The story with agency MBS is quite different. Agency MBS were purchased in the secondary market,and we expect their runoff to come through paydowns resulting from prepayments and amortizations of the underlying mortgages. Since the Fed has been a non-price-sensitive and programmatic buyer, the Fed’s portfolio of agency MBS would have received faster-prepaying mortgages (cheapest-to-deliver, in mortgage parlance). In addition, Fed holdings constitute a much larger share of the outstanding agency MBS market than of the Treasury market, hence the runoff will have a greater negative impact on agency MBS. In 2021, the Fed bought US$575 billion of agency MBS versus net issuance of US$875 billion, resulting in US$300 billion of MBS that the market absorbed. Our agency MBS strategists project that in 2022 the runoff will remove US$15 billion from the Fed’s balance sheet against projected net issuance of US$550 billion, implying that the market needs to absorb US$565 billion in mortgages, the largest amount of mortgages the private market would ever digest. What’s more, the market will have to find a more price-sensitive buyer for the cheapest-to-deliver mortgages. Putting it all together, the balance sheet runoff clearly will have more impact on agency MBS than other asset classes.

  Of course, the markets have already begun to price in some of these effects,as mortgage spreads have widened about 20bp in the last two weeks. Still, our agency MBS strategists have advocated being short the mortgage basis for some time,and they think there is still room for modest widening (~10bp) in the mortgage basis from here, with mortgage rates rising towards 4%.

  Do not underestimate the effects of liquidity withdrawal. The mammoth balance sheet the Fed has built up was a key determinant of liquidity across markets. As balance sheet runoff is put into motion, the withdrawal of liquidity will have profound impacts. Determining how it plays out is far from straightforward and will be determined by a variety of factors. Understanding the details matters. So hold on tight – there’s volatility ahead.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 19:30

• American Students Organize Classroom "Walk Outs" To Demand Return To Remote Learning
  American Students Organize Classroom “Walk Outs” To Demand Return To Remote Learning

  This is only the latest indication of just how easily influenced young people are by their teachers.

  Even though young Americans are perhaps the least susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 as a group, the ever-rebellious young people of America have decided once again to follow their teacher and protest by staging classroom “walkouts” intended to disrupt the school day.

  

  Just when their parents could finally breathe a sigh of relief now that in-person classes had finally resumed, the “long-suffering” young people have America have taken it upon themselves to mimic the bad behavior of their elders (in this case, the teachers who function as de facto babysitters for millions of young people today). In Chicago, where a teacher’s strike had only just ended, a small group of protesting students staged a walkout, complaining that they were dissatisfied with the additional health protocols the teachers union agreed to earlier this week, ending its standoff with the Chicago Public Schools district and Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

  “I think CPS is listening, but I’m not sure they’ll make a change,” said Jaden Horten, a junior at Jones College Prep High School, during a rally at district headquarters that was attended by roughly 1,000 students, according to Reuters.

  Student walkouts have occurred at schools across Chicago, and in scattered areas across the country.

  For example, about 600 young people from 11 Boston schools participated in student walkouts there, according to the school district, which serves nearly 52K pupils. Many protesting students returned to classrooms later, while others went home following “peaceful” demonstrations. Fortunately for the district, it looks like these protests have petered out as the city’s climate-focused Mayor Michelle Wu, who rose to prominence as a public education activist, praised the young people for letting their voices be heard.

  Amusingly, an online petition started by one Boston high school senior branded schools a “COVID-19 breeding ground” and called for a remote learning option. This had collected more than 8K signatures as of Friday morning.

  Echoing the Chicago Teacher’s Union, the Boston Student Advisory Council, a group representing students that claims to have organized the walkout posted a series of “demands” on Twitter, including two weeks of online instruction and more stringent COVID-19 testing for teachers and students. The kids are even holding their own press conferences now.

  Today! https://t.co/u1AzHM884u

  — Boston Student Advisory Council (@BSACbuzz) January 14, 2022

  At least one student who spoke with a Reuters reporter said they no longer feel safe in school on account of them living with vulnerable grandparents.

  Ash O’Brien, a 10th-grade student at Boston Latin School who left the building with about a dozen others on Friday, said he didn’t feel safe staying in school.

  “I live with two grandparents who are immune-compromised,” he said. “So I don’t want to go to school, risk getting sick and come home to them.”

  In a statement, Boston Public Schools said it supports students advocating for their beliefs and vowed to listen to their concerns.

  The walkouts started in NYC, and have so far pushed Mayor Adams to consider a “temporary” remote learning option. But that’s about all of the “progress” the students can claim so far.

  So far, it appears that the omicron wave in the US might just be peaking, as cities, typically the locus of spread, have seen cases start to turn over.

  Earlier this week, students at several New York City schools staged a walkout to protest what they said were inadequate safety measures. Mayor Eric Adams said on Thursday his administration was considering a temporary remote learning option for a significant number of students who were staying home.

  So far, roughly 5K public schools across the country have closed for at least one day due to the pandemic according to one website that tracks school closures.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 19:00

• Glenn Greenwald Exposes Deep State Effort To Stop Trump Pardoning Edward Snowden And Julian Assange
  Glenn Greenwald Exposes Deep State Effort To Stop Trump Pardoning Edward Snowden And Julian Assange

  Authored by Adam Dick via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

  There was much speculation toward the end of Donald Trump’s term as president of the United States that Trump would pardon Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, or both of these men who were responsible for exposing vast amounts of wrongdoing by the US government. But, it did not come to pass. Why? Glenn Greenwald, who played a key role in helping Snowden expose information about the US government’s mass surveillance programs and who advocated in public and behind the scenes that Trump pardon both men, has some interesting thoughts about that.

  

  The reason Trump failed to issue a pardon for either Snowden or Assange centers on the deep state trying to protect itself by placing Trump in jeopardy, suggested Greenwald last week in an episode of his System Update show.

  In a written introduction for the episode, Greenwald notes that Trump, while president, had both “raised the possibility that he might pardon Snowden” and was “actively considering a pardon for Assange.”

  Greenwald, in the introduction, zeros in on a recent interview of Trump by Candace Owens. In the interview, Trump stated he came “very close” to pardoning one of them but did not ultimately do so. Why? Trump said the reason was because Trump “was too nice” to issue the pardon.

  Greenwald isn’t buying that explanation. He writes:

  The question that obviously emerges from that answer: too nice to whom? To the U.S. security services — the CIA, NSA and FBI — which had spent four years doing everything possible to sabotage and undermine Trump and his presidency with their concoction of Russiagate and other leaks of false accusations to their corporate media allies? Too nice to the war-mongering servants of the military-industrial complex in the establishment wings of both parties who were the allies of those security services in attempting to derail Trump’s America First foreign policy agenda? Too nice to John Brennan, James Clapper and Susan Rice, the Obama-era security officials most eager to see both Assange and Snowden rot in prison for life because they exposed Obama’s spying crimes and the Democrats’ corruption in 2016? Trump’s “I’m too nice” explanation is, shall we say, less than persuasive.

  In the System Update episode, Greenwald further explains that Trump’s enmity toward these deep state forces that helped lead Greenwald and many other individuals to think that Trump may issue the pardons:

  Now the argument for why President Trump not only should have pardoned Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, but why some of us believed there was a chance that he could didn’t rely on the benevolence of President Trump. It relied on the fact that he knew better than anybody how deceitful and abusive and dangerous these agencies are. The agencies that were exposed by Snowden and Assange and the ones that were demanding that they be imprisoned forever. He knew, as well as anybody, the treachery and the illegal interference in our domestic politics because he was one of their targets.

  Yet, the pardons did not materialize. Why? Greenwald states that Greenwald “knew that Trump wanted to pardon Edward Snowden and had strongly considered pardoning Julian Assange.” But, continues Greenwald, Trump “got scared into pardoning neither of them for reasons I’m about to explain to you.” Greenwald then argues that ultimately Trump gave in to deep state pressure applied through Republican Senators’ threat to convict Trump on the impeachment brought against him in his final weeks in office. Says Greenwald:

  They were making very clear to him explicitly clear Republican senators like Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio and Mitch McConnell that if you do any of those things that you are considering doing, pardoning Assange and Snowden, declassifying JFK files, declassifying other secrets that should have been declassified long ago because they’re from decades old treachery on the part of the US government, we will vote to impeach you. They had this leverage the sword of Damocles hanging over his head….

  “This is the story of why the deep state yet again got its way,” concludes Greenwald in his System Update episode, “even with a person in the White House who knows firsthand just how evil and destructive and toxic they are.”

  Watch the System Update episode, and read the introduction and transcript, here.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 18:30

• Crypto Options Suggest Bitcoin Bottom Is In As Hash Rate Hits Record High
  Crypto Options Suggest Bitcoin Bottom Is In As Hash Rate Hits Record High

  After two months of brutal, constant pain for crypto longs on the back of fears the Fed is about to yank the punchbowl and drain enough liquidity to end the party (at least until the next recession and market crash, when the Fed will double-down on easing, launch NIRP, buy equity ETFs and upgrade helicopter money to tactical money ICBMs, finally sending all cryptos to the moon and beyond), the tide may finally be turning at least according to the options market.

  After bitcoin suffered its biggest drop since May 2021 as it tumbled more than 40%, sending the price to the most oversold level since the covid crash – traditionally a failsafe bullish indicator…

  

  …. the world’s largest cryptocurrency rebounded this week after falling below $40,000 for the first time since September on Monday and has bounced as much 10%, just as we said last weekend it would.

  In short, Bitcoin appears to have stabilized, and options activity suggests investors believe the test of $40,000 – a critical support level below which Mike Novogratz said last week is where he would buy more (and appears to have done just that)…

  Looks like a “yes” https://t.co/2mvfynJwJY

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 10, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  … is over, and more upside is ahead, according to Genesis Global Trading including Noelle Acheson.

  For one, the skew – or difference in implied volatility of bullish and bearish bets – has recently dropped from double-digits to near zero, and revealed a decrease in investor demand for put options and an increase for call options, Genesis data show.

  

  “That shift in preference may be bullish for the price of BTC, all else equal,” Acheson added, and indeed a look at the option-implied probability cone shows an upside target just shy of $10,000..

  

  It’s not just option traders and billionaire investors who see $40,000 as a bottom- it is a view echoed by many analysts in the famously optimistic world of crypto. Quoted by Bloomberg, Martin Gaspar and Katherine Webb at CrossTower said in a Friday note that Bitcoin’s reserve risk, a measure of confidence of long-term BTC holders, is currently lower than it was at the coin’s last bottom in July 2021, and now stands in the “buy” zone, which could give “more weight to the indication that this is a bottom.”

  The $40,000 level “has been the key pivot point,” said Bloomberg Intelligence’s famously bullish crypto analyst, Mike McGlone. Up next, $50,000 comes into play before Bitcoin resumes its upward trend toward his forecast of $100,000, he said.

  “Demand and adoption are increasing and supply is declining,” McGlone said. “Something has to reverse the increasing Bitcoin adoption trend or the rules of economics point to higher prices. I expect demand and adoption trajectories to remain favorable.”

  

  McGlone isn’t alone in his calls for Bitcoin to more than double from current levels. According to Bloomberg, Jonathan Padilla, co-founder of Snickerdoodle Labs, a blockchain company focused on data privacy, expects Bitcoin to hit that level by the end of 2022, and also said that $40,000 is likely a floor, given the level of institutional capital he expects to flow into the market this year.

  “The institutional nature is dramatically different from the primarily retail focus in 2017, 2018,” Padilla said. “That shows the strength of institutional buying and the demand from the long-term perspective.” Of course, this cuts both ways, because when institutions are deleveraging, they dump those assets first that have outperformed in 2021 – such as cryptos – which is also why crypto’s correlation to risk assets has exploded as institutional adoption has grown.

  David Tawil, president of ProChain Capital, was ready to watch the $38,000 level in this past week’s sell-off. But, he hoped to see U.S. tech stocks start to rebound, which signals to him that “the bottom is in” for Bitcoin, he told Bloomberg’s “QuickTake Stock” broadcast.

  “This is a pretty good buying level, especially if we go ahead and just retrace the losses — you’re talking about a 50%-plus gain from a year,” Tawil said.  

  A surprising view comes from some of the biggest crypto skeptics around – JPMorgan, and specifically their clients, who have recently initiated a new target price for Bitcoin for this year of 2022. In a recent report, America’s largest commercial bank asked its clients where they see Bitcoin by the end of 2022. Based on the results, nearly 41% of clients believe that Bitcoin could be trading at $60,000 or above by the year-end, or about 50% higher than the current levels and more than what other asset classes can offer.

  Others are less bullish. Another 23% of JPMorgan clients believe that BTC will be available at a 50% discount from the current levels i.e. $20,000. While another 20 percent believe that Bitcoin will be trading flat at $40,000. Only a mere 5% believe that Bitcoin will be trading above $100,000 levels.

  Marko Papic, chief strategist at Clocktower Group, is another skeptic – he warns that Bitcoin’s correlation with the S&P 500 remains at one of its highest readings in the past 12 months; this is happening just as tech names have swooned amid fears of a hawkish Fed.  In this environment, “you don’t really want to own high-beta risk assets,” he said. “You want to own things that are much more sensitive to value, much more sensitive to global growth and cyclicals, and that’s why I don’t think crypto and Bitcoin are going to really do great over the next three to six months.”

  In his latest Crypto Keys note (available to professional subs), UBS FX strategist James Malcolm has turned quite bearish on crypto, writing that the recent drop in bitcoin prices is the result of disappointment with the SEC not approving ETFs, as well as three other reasons: 1. It’s not better money; 2. The technology may prove subpar; 3. Regulation is a rising hurdle. While we disagree with all of these points, UBS does point out something notable: whales now own more bitcoin than ever before.

  

  Meanwhile, as debates rage what’s next for crypto, one thing that is certain is that China’s attempt to crush the largest cryptocurrency last year when it banished all crypto miners has now failed (and backfired) spectacularly:

  Bitcoin’s hash rate has returned to all-time highs despite losing a key hash rate contributor. Meanwhile, amid lackluster price action, Block CEO Jack Dorsey confirmed the creation of an open Bitcoin  mining system. according to CoinTelegraph, while Kazakhstan, the network’s second-most important BTC mining country, experienced an internet blackout last week due to civil unrest, the hash rate faltered no more than 13.4% before regathering to reach all-time highs.

  As shown in the data below from Glassnode, with the price checking into the $42,000 range on Thursday, the mean hash rate hit 215 million terahashes per second.

  

  Said otherwise, Bitcoin miners continue to show resilience, and as Fidelity Digital Assets observed, the network is even “more widely distributed around the world.”

  As testament to this, Jack Dorsey’s Block confirmed it would develop open-source Bitcoin mining systems in 2022. In the Twitter thread, Thomas Templeton, a general manager at Block, addressed issues relating to the availability, reliability, performance and products pertaining to BTC mining. In sum, Block’s goals for BTC mining are the following:

  “We want to make mining more distributed and efficient in every way, from buying, to set up, to maintenance, to mining. We’re interested because mining goes far beyond creating new bitcoin. We see it as a long-term need for a future that is fully decentralized and permissionless.”

  Building a BTC mining system “out in the open” and alongside the community is no mean feat. Econoalchemist, an established home BTC miner and BTC magazine contributor, tweeted that developing products in open source would “build trust where no reputation exists currently and also might shift consumer expectations in that direction.”

  Ultimately, Block’s mining solutions may pave the way for more DIY miners to enter the space.

  Ultimately, it seems the sky’s the limit for Bitcoin’s hash rate, at least until the next 2,016 blocks, when the network difficulty resets.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 18:00

• Is Masking Kids At School Working?
  Is Masking Kids At School Working?

  Authored by Ian Miller and Michael Betrus via The Brownstone Institute,

  Kids in California, New York, Illinois and a number of other states are required to wear face masks every day at school. Nearly 40% of school children nationwide are required to do so. Other states leave it up to local rules, which means about half the kids in the country are wearing face masks every day, social distancing, eating lunch outside, and performing athletics in masks. 

  

  Close to 30% of all schools are legally prevented from implementing mandates, or face pending legal challenges to restrictions, which means few in those states are imposing restrictions like we saw in 2020-2021.

  Below are those states with and without face mask requirements in schools.

  

  There are two things that would almost assuredly amaze most parents across the country. Many parents in states like California or Illinois with mask mandates would likely be shocked how normal school protocols are in Texas, Florida, Utah, Iowa and other states shown in dark green or orange. Those with school-aged children in the green states would be stunned to learn that those in blue are requiring kids to wear face masks in school, socially distance, and eat outside in the cold or rain.

  Some universities are requiring students to wear masks while on campus, even outdoors, including the University of Southern California and the University of Arizona.

  COVID-19 is currently surging all over the country. Fortunately, a combination of a less lethal variant, recovered immunity and vaccinations are preventing many from the highly serious conditions we have seen in the past. You can see below that positive tests have skyrocketed over the past few weeks. Why so many people who aren’t sick are waiting in long lines and panicking to buy at-home tests is the subject for another article, but it’s clear that millions are currently contracting COVID-19:

  

  In looking at the grouping of the states (CA/OR/WA/IL/NY/DE/MA/CT/NJ/MD/NV/NM/VA/RI) with required masking in schools compared to those without mask mandates (UT/FL/AZ/TX/OK/MO/IA/AR/TN/SC), where very few students are wearing them, we see nearly identical trends, and those with little to no masking have lower current case rates: 

  

  The proportion of pediatric positive tests is similar in all parts of the country right now, about 20% of all positive tests across the three 0-17 age groups shown below. This is about the same regardless of weather (seasonality) or restrictions:

  

  It made us wonder. Are the school restrictions in some states working? It’s not about cases; cases are really a product of community spread and how much testing we do. It is about sickness. Are more kids getting hospitalized for or with COVID-19 in the states with normal school protocols than those requiring face masks?

  We reached out to Josh Stevenson (@ifihadastick on Twitter), who has repeatedly produced amazing data analysis throughout the pandemic. Below is what he uncovered. This is an original compilation you won’t see anywhere else. For the states requiring masks, COVID-19 pediatric hospitalizations are averaging 4.23 per 100,000 kids:

  

  For the states not allowing face mask mandates (or close to not requiring), COVID-19 pediatric hospitalizations are averaging 4.90 per 100,000 kids:

  

  The hospitalization rate is nearly identical. There is no discernible difference between outcomes of infection or hospitalization for kids in communities where face masks are required in school and those where face coverings are optional.

  Kids should be in school with normal protocols.

  They should be in class without masks, without plexiglass dividers, socializing while they eat lunch and participating in sports without face masks. Logic clearly tells us this, and this data overwhelmingly proves there is no health benefit to requiring kids to wear face masks in school.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 17:30

• "No Trust In Tesla Brand" – New Model 3 Delivered To Customer Without Brake Pad
  “No Trust In Tesla Brand” – New Model 3 Delivered To Customer Without Brake Pad

  Tesla owner, April Gillmore, took delivery of a new Model 3 Performance on Dec. 19, only to notice a deafening scraping sound coming from the rear. 

  Gillmore put a few dozen miles on the Model 3 last month before contacting Tesla about “a grinding noise” coming from the driver-side rear wheel while driving. The Tesla Dealership on Florida Avenue in Tampa had no service appointments for inspection. They even told her the “noise was normal.” 

  Response from Tesla was that the “noise was normal.” Obviously, nothing is normal about the noise. At this point, I thought there must be a rock or pebble stuck between rotor and dust shield. So, I drove the car to an independent shop to have the wheel inspected. pic.twitter.com/FaT4KKAsKi

  — April G (@aprildawn78) January 13, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  She was fed up with Tesla’s terrible service and took the Model 3 to an independent shop for inspection. Mechanics discovered “there wasn’t an inside brake pad installed at the factory,” she said, adding the “backside of the rotor and that side of the caliper are destroyed.” At the time, the car only had 112 miles on it. 

  Watched as wheel was removed and learned there was NO INSIDE BRAKE PAD installed on the wheel. 😳 Called Tesla roadside and had car towed directly to Tesla Service Center. pic.twitter.com/haKGGOSYxr

  — April G (@aprildawn78) January 13, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Around Dec. 27, she had the car towed to Tesla via Roadside Assistance to the Tesla facility. They said all brake components for that wheel would be replaced by Dec. 31. However, what was supposed to be a quick fix has become a nightmare. The car is still in the shop as of Jan. 14. 

  @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/TAKCTsEJPH

  — April G (@aprildawn78) January 14, 2022

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  Gillmore told The Drive she had “never purchased a new or used vehicle that was under warranty and had this type of experience with a service department.”

  “I absolutely do not trust the Tesla brand in any way. Not only did they deliver a car to me that was unsafe to drive, but they also blew me off about the noise the car was making, and now they’re dragging their feet on making things right. If they can build and ship new Model 3Ps then why can’t they repair the ones that they’ve already sold to people? I had no clue that Tesla treated their customers this way prior to this experience,” she said.

  If you’re considering buying a Tesla, make sure you’re prepared for the worst customer service experience EVER. Once you drive off the lot, they do not care… even if the issue you’re having is 100% their fault. #teslamodel3 #model3 #horribleservice

  — April G (@aprildawn78) January 13, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  This is the latest quality control issue plaguing the Tesla brand. Last month, the company recalled nearly half a million cars for rearview camera problems that could increase cars’ crash risk. 

  Over the years, some Tesla owners have reported bumpers ripping off in adverse weather conditions, roofs flying off, and trim and paneling not lining up, among many other defects. Some owners have recently had “buyers remorse” as their heaters stopped working in freezing temperatures.  

  What’s mindboggling is that a trillion-dollar carmaker continues to have quality control issues. Who the hell is in charge of signing off on these defective vehicles?

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 17:00

• Leaked Fauci Financials Expose How Millionaire Doctor Profited From Pandemic
  Leaked Fauci Financials Expose How Millionaire Doctor Profited From Pandemic

  Finally, after a handful of organizations tried suing Dr. Anthony Fauci in order to have them released, the good doctor’s financials – along with those of his wife, who is the NIH’s top bioethicist – have been disclosed in detail. And they were leaked by the same Senator who Fauci called a “moron” last week during a hot-mic moment.

  

  We already knew that Dr. Fauci is the highest-paid federal government employee, earning an annual salary of more than $400K. His wife, Christine Grady, earns $176K as Chief of the Department of Bioethics at the NIH.

  The records, published by Republican Roger Marshall, himself a doctor and also the junior US senator from Kansas, showed that the Faucis’ have a combined net worth of more than $10MM.

  🚨🚨 BREAKING! I obtained Dr. Fauci’s previously unpublished financial disclosures. Dr. Fauci was completely dishonest about his disclosures being readily accessible to the public which is why I am releasing them now.

  Dr. Fauci’s Financial Disclosures ⬇️https://t.co/KdRbedRTX5

  — Dr. Roger Marshall (@RogerMarshallMD) January 15, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  As the Daily Mail explains, Fauci, 80, has led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984 and, if he continues until the end of Biden’s term in 2024, will have made roughly $2.5MM as the president’s chief medical advisor. When he retires, Fauci’s pension will be the largest in US history, exceeding $350,000 per year.

  As a reminder, Dr. Fauci lied to Congress yet again by insisting that his financials were public, when they very much weren’t (before being leaked by the Senator from Kansas, that is).

  While the doctor has insisted he hasn’t profited from the pandemic, his paperwork showed that he and his wife were paid $14,000 to “virtually” attend a series of galas directly related to his position as the nation’s de facto COVID czar.

  

  Perhaps the most entertaining disclosure from Dr. Fauci’s financials is the revelation that the couple owns a restaurant in tony San Francisco. It’s called Jackson Fillmore Trattoria. Unfortunately for them, the restaurant didn’t make any money last year.

  Sen. Marshall clashed with the 80-year-old doctor on Tuesday when Marshall wanted to see Fauci’s financial information. Fauci replied that the documents were public, and appeared to take umbrage at even being asked. “Yes or no, would you be willing to submit to Congress and the public a financial disclosure that includes your past and current investments?” Marshall asked. “Our office cannot find them.” Fauci replied: “I don’t understand why you’re asking me that question…my financial disclosure is public knowledge and has been so for the last 37 years or so.”

  According to the Center for Public Integrity, Fauci’s financial statements were indeed publicly available, however, obtaining them was a lengthy procedure: they requested the document in May 2020 didn’t receive it until three months later.

  All told, Dr. Fauci has three accounts with Charles Schwab that have a total of $8,337,940.90. He has a contributory IRA with $638,519.70 in it, and a brokerage trust account with $2,403,522.28. Finally, the most valuable of the three disclosed was a Schwab One Trust containing $5,295,898.92.

  

  

  

  Most of Dr. Fauci’s wealth comes from his government salary, but he has also made a substantial portion from books and appearances. Sen. Marshall is pushing for a new law called the “FAUCI Act” that would require unelected bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci to produce more thorough financial disclosures so that they can be appropriately scrutinized by the American public.

  Readers can find more disclosures on Sen. Marshall’s website, which features a more comprehensive breakdown of the doctor’s financials, along with copies of all the associated paperwork.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 16:44

• States Investigating Surge In Mortality Rate Among 18–49-Year-Olds, Majority Unrelated To COVID-19
  States Investigating Surge In Mortality Rate Among 18–49-Year-Olds, Majority Unrelated To COVID-19

  Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Health departments in several states confirmed to The Epoch Times that they are looking into a steep surge in the mortality rate for people aged 18 to 49 in 2021—a majority of which are not linked to COVID-19.

  Deaths among people aged 18 to 49 increased more than 40 percent in the 12 months ending October 2021 compared to the same period in 2018–2019, before the pandemic, according to an analysis by The Epoch Times of death certificate data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

  The agency doesn’t yet have full 2021 figures, as death certificate data has a lag of up to eight weeks or more.

  

  The surge differed greatly from state to state, with the most dramatic increase in young-to-middle age deaths in the South, Midwest, and the West Coast, while the northeastern states generally saw much milder spikes. Public health authorities in several states with some of the largest increases are examining the issue.

  Texas saw the 18 to 49 age mortality jump 61 percent, the second-highest increase in the country. Of that, less than 58 percent was attributed to COVID-19.

  “Our Center of Health Statistics is looking at the data,” said Chris Van Deusen, the head of Media Relations at the Texas Department of State Health Services, via email. “We’ll get back with you.”

  Florida, which saw an increase of 51 percent, 48 percent of that attributed to COVID-19, is also probing the matter.

  

  “I am looking into it to see if there is some sort of correlation/causation,” said Jeremy Redfern, spokesman for the Florida Department of Health via email.

  Nevada saw the highest increase, 65 percent, of which just 36 percent was attributed to COVID-19.

  Shannon Litz, a public information officer at the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services, said via email she passed on questions regarding the mortality spike to the agency’s Office of Analytics “for review.”

  The District of Columbia experienced an increase of 72 percent, none of it attributed to COVID-19.

  Robert Mayfield, spokesman for D.C.’s health authority, referred The Epoch Times to the district’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME), which suggested it lacked the expertise to analyze the phenomenon.

  “OCME does not currently have an epidemiologist (the position is being advertised) so it has no present ability to analyze the data,” said the office’s spokesman Rodney Adams via email.

  Arizona recorded a 57 percent increase, 37 percent of which was attributed to COVID-19.

  Arizona’s Department of Health Services couldn’t respond to questions regarding the issue because its data is “not yet finalized,” said Tom Herrmann, the agency’s public information officer, via email.

  

  Other states with some of the highest increases were Tennessee (57 percent up, 33 percent attributed to COVID-19), California (55 percent up, 42 percent attributed to COVID-19), New Mexico (52 percent up, 33 percent attributed to COVID-19), and Louisiana (51 percent up, 32 percent attributed to COVID-19). None of their health authorities responded to requests for comment.

  The mortality surge seemed to be significantly milder in the northeast. New Hampshire saw no increase, Massachusetts had only a 13 percent spike (24 percent of it attributed to COVID-19), and New York, one of the worst-hit by the pandemic in the region, was up 29 percent (30 percent of it attributed to COVID-19).

  CDC data on the causes of those excess deaths aren’t yet available for 2021, aside from those involving COVID-19, pneumonia, and influenza. There were close to 6,000 excess pneumonia deaths that didn’t involve COVID-19 in the 18 to 49 age group in the 12 months ending October 2021. Influenza was only involved in 50 deaths in this age group, down from 550 in the same period pre-pandemic. The flu death count didn’t exclude those that also involved COVID-19 or pneumonia, the CDC noted.

  

  A part of the surge could be likely blamed on drug overdoses, which increased to more than 101,000 in the 12 months ending June 2021 from about 72,000 in 2019, the CDC estimated. About two-thirds of those deaths involved synthetic opioids such as fentanyl that are often smuggled to the United States from China via Mexico.

  For those aged 50 to 84, mortality increased more than 27 percent, representing more than 470,000 excess deaths. Some 77 percent of the deaths had COVID-19 marked on the death certificate as the cause or a contributing factor.

  For those 85 or older, mortality increased about 12 percent with more than 100,000 excess deaths. There were more than 130,000 COVID-related deaths in this group, indicating these seniors were less likely to die of a non-COVID-related cause from November 2020 to October 2021 than during the same period of 2018–2019.

  Comparing 2020 to 2019, mortality increased some 24 percent for those aged 18 to 49, with less than a third of those excess deaths involving COVID-19. For those aged 50 to 84, mortality increased less than 20 percent, with over 70 percent of that involving COVID-19. For those even older, mortality jumped about 16 percent, with nearly 90 percent of it involving COVID-19.

  For those under 18, mortality decreased about 0.4 percent in 2020 compared to 2019. In the 12 months ending October 2021, it fell some 3.3 percent compared to the same period in 2018–2019.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 16:30

• Et Tu? Chuck Todd Savages Biden Over Failing Presidency As Liberal Media Cuts Bait
  Et Tu? Chuck Todd Savages Biden Over Failing Presidency As Liberal Media Cuts Bait

  As legacy media continues to distance itself from the Biden administration amid dismal approval ratings (and dismal viewership), MSNBC‘s Chuck Todd delivered perhaps the harshest indictment of a president his network has spent the last three years breathlessly fluffing.

  

  In light of the press’s previously ‘complicit’ relationship with the Biden White House, Todd’s monologue was blistering to say the least.

  “For President Biden, the plan was that Covid would be defeated, the economy would fully recover and he would be able to deliver a return to normalcy. But plans have a way of going sideways. A year into Mr. Biden’s presidency, unemployment is down and wages are up, but inflation is also up to a 40-year high. Infrastructure and Covid relief bills were passed, but Build Back Better is stuck in neutral. And most important, though vaccines are available and effective, Delta and Omicron have dealt a one-two punch to the economy, the supply chain and that promised return to normalcy…

  …And on Thursday the Supreme Court blocked Mr. Biden’s “vaccine or test” mandate for large businesses, perhaps taking away the last effective tool in his Covid toolbox. That same day Mr. Biden’s last-minute push for voting rights bills was dealt a likely fatal blow. Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema said again what she’s been saying for months. She is opposed to changing the filibuster to pass the legislation. So, now what? All of this came just as the president was heading, by the way, to Capitol Hill to lobby fellow Democrats to change the Senate rules. So it was quite the exclamation point on a terrible week.“

  Watch:

  This Sunday morning —

  Every new administration enters office with an agenda of optimism.

  For President Biden, the plan was that Covid would be defeated, the economy would fully recover and he would deliver a return to normalcy.

  But plans have a way of going sideways. pic.twitter.com/ojXCVrNujv

  — Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) January 16, 2022

  Todd’s comments are the latest in a slew of leftist media outlets jumping ship on the Biden administration.

  By casting his adversaries as enemies, undermining the efficacy of elections, seeking to give the federal gov’t more control over state elections, & pressuring his party to do away with the filibuster, Biden is following in the well-worn path of Trump. https://t.co/HUgHBU3lKE

  — Matt Lewis (@mattklewis) January 14, 2022

  

  

  

  

  Even SNL…

  

  And then there’s this…

  Once again when confronted with the abysmal response to covid (among other things), Psaki tries to be a sarcastic ass rather than show openness to change. She jokes that wanting better is “bunny rabbits and ice cream”.

  Thousands of deaths is not a joke.
  pic.twitter.com/ti2xHgYnUi

  — Héctor E. Alcalá (@Hector_E_Alcala) January 14, 2022

  Maybe Kamala can rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic?

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 16:00

• False Flags Suddenly No Longer A Crazy Conspiracy Theory
  False Flags Suddenly No Longer A Crazy Conspiracy Theory

  Authored by Caitlin Johnstone,

  In a drastic pivot from typical denunciations of false flag operations as conspiratorial nonsense that don’t exist outside the demented imagination of Alex Jones, the US political/media class is proclaiming with one voice that Russia is currently orchestrating just such an operation to justify an invasion of Ukraine.

  “As part of its plans, Russia is laying the groundwork to have the option of fabricating a pretext for invasion,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Friday.

  “We have information that indicates Russia has already pre-positioned a group of operatives to conduct a false flag operation in eastern Ukraine.”

  

  “Without getting into too much detail, we do have information that indicates that Russia is already working actively to create a pretext for a potential invasion, for a move on Ukraine,” Pentagon Spokesperson John Kirby told the press on Friday.

  “In fact, we have information that they’ve pre-positioned a group of operatives, to conduct what we call a false flag operation, an operation designed to look like an attack on them or their people, or Russian speaking people in Ukraine, as an excuse to go in.”

  The US government has substantiated these incendiary claims with the usual amount of evidence, by which I of course mean jack dick nothingballs. The mass media have not been dissuaded from reporting on this issue by the complete absence of any evidence that this Kremlin false flag plot is in fact a real thing that actually happened, their journalistic standards completely satisfied by the fact that their government instructed them to report it. Countless articles and news segments containing the phrase “false flag” have been blaring throughout all the most influential news outlets in the western world without the slightest hint of skepticism.

  This sudden embrace of the idea that governments can stage attacks on their own people to justify their own pre-existing agendas is a sharp pivot from the scoff which such a notion in mainstream liberal circles has typically received. This 2018 article from The New York Times simply dismisses the idea that the 2014 Maidan massacre was a false flag carried out by western-backed opposition fighters in Ukraine to frame the riot police of the government who was ousted in that coup, for example, despite the existence of plenty of evidence that this is indeed what happened. This BBC article dismisses without argument the idea that the alleged 2018 chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria could have been a false flag carried out by the Al Qaeda-aligned insurgents on the ground to provoke a western attack on the Syrian government, yet there are mountains of evidence that this was the case.

  Articles denouncing the very idea of “false flag conspiracy theories” surface routinely in the mass media. Snopes has a whole article explaining that false flags are kooky nonsense without any mention of the fact that this is a known tactic we’ve seen intelligence operatives discussing in declassified documents, like when the CIA considered planting bombs in Miami to blame Castro. I myself was once temporarily suspended by Facebook just for posting an article about false flag operations that are publicly acknowledged to have occurred. People who dare to question the many gaping plot holes in the official 9/11 narrative have often been treated with the same disdain and revulsion as neo-Nazis and pedophilia advocates.

  “A US official told CNN” is not a “Scoop” but demonstrates the willingness of ‘journalists’ to stenograph unverifiable government disinformation. https://t.co/wr2u3xKtiI

  — Moon of Alabama (@MoonofA) January 14, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  None of this is to say that every theory about any false flag operation is true; many are not. But the way the mass media will instantly embrace an idea to which they’ve heretofore been consistently hostile just because their government told them to to do it says so much about the state of the so-called free press today, and the fact that the rank-and-file public simply accepts this and marches along with it as though talking about false flags has always been normal says so much about the level of Orwellian doublethink that people have been trained to perform in today’s information ecosystem. The way false flag operations were widely considered conspiratorial hogwash until the instant they were reported as real by the media institutions who’ve lied to us about every war is downright creepy.

  The problem with preemptive false flag accusations is of course that the side making the claim can simply launch an unprovoked attack and then say “See? They’re staging a false flag to frame our side, just like we said they would!” And then they can present their subsequent actions as defensive in nature, when in reality they were the aggressors and instigators. We are seeing nothing from the obedient western news media to suggest they’d do anything other than uncritically regurgitate such claims into the minds of their trusting audiences.

  As the Beltway doctrine that US unipolar hegemony must be preserved at all cost crashes headlong into the reality of an emerging multipolar world, the US government is now more dangerous than it has ever been at any point in its history. We need the press to be holding the drivers of empire to account with the light of truth, and we need the public to be opposing and scrutinizing these reckless escalations. Instead, we are getting the exact opposite. God help us all.

  *  *  *

  My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.

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  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 15:34

• Fully Vaccinated Canadian Soccer Star Alphonso Davies Sidelined With Myocarditis
  Fully Vaccinated Canadian Soccer Star Alphonso Davies Sidelined With Myocarditis

  Another day, another story about a soccer player being sidelined due to sudden-onset heart-related illness. 

  Continuing a disturbing trend of professional soccer players being pulled from games, Canadian star Alphonso Davies, who plays for Bayern Munich, is showing signs of an “inflammation of the heart muscle,” according to CP24. 

  He is only 21 years old.

  Davies has been ruled out of Canada’s three World Cup qualifiers set to take place in Janaury and February.

  His club manager, Julian Nagelsmann, has said that the problem was caught during a follow up COVID examination.

  “He’ll sit out training until further notice. He won’t be available, also in the coming weeks. The ultrasound shows this myocarditis isn’t so dramatic but it’s a sign of myocarditis. Still, it has to heal and that will definitely take some time,” the skipper commented.

  

  He didn’t attribute the inflammation to Covid right away, stating: “There are different reasons, especially viral load or the flu, for instance, that can cause cardiac problems.”

  “That occurred pre-corona to other players. Now the probability is higher if you combine corona and top athleticism, that might cause other problems. But that’s not relevant for us right now. It’s not relevant to the treatment. It doesn’t matter if Alphonso Davies had this from the flu or Omicron-Delta or whatever. That’s not really the decisive factor,” he continued.

  “The situation is that it’s absolutely awful, terrible. What can I say? A bad situation for us.”

  Davies has stopped training and is widely considered one of the best left backs in the world. 

  He is fully vaccinated and got his booster in December, reports says.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 15:00

• "Waste Of Time" To Keep Vaccinating People: Ex-Head Of UK Vaccine Taskforce
  “Waste Of Time” To Keep Vaccinating People: Ex-Head Of UK Vaccine Taskforce

  Authored by Alexander Zhang via The Epoch Times,

  It is a “waste of time” to keep vaccinating people against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, the former chairman of Britain’s Vaccines Taskforce has said.

  

  Dr. Clive Dix, who played a key role in helping pharmaceutical firms create the COVID-19 vaccines, told LBC radio on Jan. 16: “The Omicron variant is a relatively mild virus. And to just keep vaccinating people and thinking of doing it again to protect the population is, in my view, now a waste of time.”

  Dix said the focus now should be on protecting vulnerable people, such as those over 60, 2 percent of whom remain unvaccinated.

  “We should have a highly-focused approach to get those people vaccinated and anybody else who’s vulnerable,” he said.

  Though he supports the ongoing booster campaign, he said he has been “critical” of boosting everybody as he is not convinced “it was needed or is needed” for younger people.

  Dix said, “I think the thinking of the time was very much to stop infection and transmission where clearly these vaccines don’t do that.”

  He said the government needs to be “very focused” on educating itself for the “future vaccination programme” next winter.

  He suggested that an “immune status study” should be conducted to “understand exactly where everybody’s immunity is,” so that “by next winter, we can really have a policy of vaccination that’s educated, using the right vaccines at the right time for the right people.”

  Dix told The Observer newspaper last week that mass vaccination against COVID-19 should come to an end and the UK should focus on managing it as an endemic disease like flu.

  “We now need to manage disease, not virus spread,” he said.

  “So stopping progression to severe disease in vulnerable groups is the future objective.”

  The UK government’s medical advisers have already acknowledged that it is “untenable” to jab the population every three or six months.

  Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK’s chief scientific adviser, said on Jan. 3 that it is not the government’s “long-term view” to give everyone a booster vaccine every few months.

  Professor Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group and chair of the government’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), told The Telegraph that it’s “not sustainable or affordable” to “vaccinate the planet every four to six months.”

  On Jan. 7, the UK government’s vaccination advisory committee recommended against giving a fourth dose of COVID-19 vaccine to nursing home residents and people over 80.

  The JCVI said the three doses of the vaccines are still providing “very good protection against severe disease,” and an immediate second booster dose to the most vulnerable would “provide only limited additional benefit against severe disease at this time.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 14:32

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• For Leftists, Your Freedom Is Their Misery – Your Slavery Is Their Joy
  For Leftists, Your Freedom Is Their Misery – Your Slavery Is Their Joy

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

  There is a certain level of madness required to reach the state our country is in today. I think most of us feel this and know this but I want to dissect the situation a little so that we can see the guts of the thing and understand the mechanics of it. Insanity has a structure, believe it or not, and there are ways to analyze it and identify it. For example, there are many forms of madness that stem from an obsession with power and control.

  

  In my previous article ‘Is There A Way To Prevent Psychopaths From Getting Into Positions Of Power’, I explored the thinking patterns and predatory habits of the worst 1% of humanity and how they insinuate themselves into authority by blending in (until they have all the power and no longer need to blend it). Now I want to talk more about the OTHER unstable people, the 5%-10% of the population that psychopaths exploit as a mob or army to frighten everyone else into conformity and help them achieve their goals.

  To be clear, almost any group can become an exploitable weapon used by psychopaths. There have been times in history where the elites within the Catholic Church used zealotry among Christians to dominate society to the point of torture and terror during the inquisitions and crusades. During the George W. Bush era I remember well the lies about WMDs used to herd Republicans into pointless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, that is the past. Today the problem of zealotry is resoundingly on the side of the political left.

  That is to say, the political left is now the side that is most appealing to narcissists, sociopaths, the emotionally unstable, etc., and this attraction is forming a mob that can be easily exploited by the establishment.

  What I find interesting is that leftists actually believe that THEY are the underdogs and that they are fighting a “revolution” against the establishment. This is a bizarre disconnect from reality. Every major institution of power and influence in the US is on the side of the political left. How can you be rebelling against the establishment if all your values coincide with the establishment’s agenda?

  The mainstream media and Hollywood have gone hardline in favor of leftist propaganda from critical race theory to the trans agenda and identity politics to feminism to socialism and centralization. Nearly every commercial, TV show and movie we see today reflects a far-left viewpoint or far left imagery, even though the majority of the population has no interest in woke ideology. Clearly, leftists and their friends in media think that if they force their cultism into people’s faces non-stop 24/7 that we will eventually capitulate and embrace it.

  Big Tech and major social media platforms ALL operate according to leftist politics. All of their terms of service rules are enforced to protect leftists from criticism and to censor conservatives and any moderates that dare speak up. The evidence overwhelmingly shows a left leaning bias in Big Tech censorship with conservatives being booted off platforms for nothing more than citing facts. We saw this recently with Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia GOP representative, who was banned from Twitter and called a “far-right conspiracy theorist” for posting links to the VAERS database.

  For those unfamiliar with VAERS, it is a database run by the US government to track the adverse effects of vaccinations including covid vaccinations. While the numbers have been manipulated in the past (which the CDC claims was due to “reporting errors”), VAERS has still reported thousands upon thousands of deaths and side effects directly related to the covid vaccines, but you aren’t supposed to know about that. So, Greene gets booted from Twitter for posting the government’s own data, which is now only accessible if you go through a maze of links to get to the downloads.

  Social media is also commonly used as a weapon by leftists in order to “cancel” people that step out of line. An American Airlines pilot was attacked this week by a Twitter mob when a crazed feminist recorded images of his luggage. His crime? A small sticker on his suitcase which said “Lets Go Brandon.” The woman and her Twitter cohorts called for the pilot to be fired and American Airlines is “investigating” the issue.

  This is just one instance among thousands in the past few years that illustrate the sheer rage leftists feel when they are faced with a free thinking person. Their immediate reaction is to punish and destroy rather than accept and move on.

  But where does this mentality come from?

  I think it’s a combination of a culture of narcissism and collectivism coupled with a desperate desire for weak people to feel as though they are powerful. Leftists are very commonly people you might call the “runners-up” in life. There are a lot of malcontents and socially inept failures in their ranks that grow up feeling powerless. Instead of improving their lot by improving themselves and achieving something of merit, they instead blame others and the world for their lack of accomplishment.

  This mentality can also be seen with their academia which often exaggerates their own importance and the importance of their accolades. One can get a masters degree in social sciences or feminist studies, but how useful is that person to the world really? Being an activist alone is not a career and they produce nothing, so the only measure of their education and their life is how much they can destroy, not how much they can build and create.

  Joe Rogan’s latest move from Twitter over to GETTR is another big story that leftists are losing their minds over. They act as though they just want to be rid of conservatives and argumentative moderates from their “safe spaces,” but in reality this does not satisfy them. They don’t want us to walk away, they want us to conform. They want us trapped within their echo chambers and going along to get along, or, they want us erased.

  Leftists see people as property of the collective, and if you and millions of others walk away this reflects badly on their ideology, which is unacceptable. This is why they are CONSTANTLY attacking or trying to take down conservative social media platforms. You would think they would be happy that GETTR exists, but they are miserable. Your freedom is their misery.

  Think about that for a moment; there are millions of leftists out there that cannot abide your existence if you are free to express your discontent with their narrative.

  When Joe Rogan contracted covid the leftists were jittery with excitement hoping he would die. When he beat the virus in less than three days without being vaccinated they cried out in horror. It’s as if they don’t realize that most unvaccinated people have had the virus and have easily survived it (I had covid for a week and then I was fine – I will NEVER get vaccinated).

  Maybe they are aware that the vaccines are mostly pointless. Maybe what really bothers them is that the unvaxxed are free and do not conform to the mandates or the fear mongering? Maybe they are more concerned about the act of defiance rather than any issues of legitimate “health safety”…?

  And this brings me to the relationship between the majority of government and the political left, which are working hand in hand to push forward covid controls and vax mandates. I’ve said this before and I’ll point it out again – There is no longer any debate about who the authoritarians really are. If you want to be free from overt government intrusion and tyranny you go to a conservative red state. If you want to be a slave to bureaucracy you go to a progressive blue state. Red states value individual freedom – Blue states do not. This is undeniable.

  Leftists are not the rebels they think they are; they are not the heroes – They are the villains. They are the empire.

  I believe the vax mandate agenda in particular appeals to their innate desire for control over others. This is evident in their crazed rhetoric over the vaccination issue. The LA Times just published an Op-Ed titled ‘Mocking Anti-Vaxxers’ Covid Deaths Is Ghoulish, Yes – But May Be Necessary’ (originally titled ‘Why Shouldn’t We Dance On The Graves Of Anti-Vaxxers?), and it’s this kind of bloodthirsty propaganda that truly reveals the extend of the political left’s broken psychology.

  They want you to die for going against the mandates. They seem to think that covid is their avenging angel, but this only shows that they are too dumb to understand basic science or too malicious to think rationally.

  The Biden Administration has been a key element in fear mongering over the covid pandemic, which has an average Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of 0.26% to 0.27% according to dozens of peer reviewed studies, and now with the even less dangerous Omicron strain the death rate is plummeting further. The overwhelming majority of people have NOTHING to fear from covid, yet leftists readily rally around Biden and his medical tyranny.

  Furthermore, the bias (or ignorance) of the LA Times is made clear when we look at the actual data for Breakthrough Cases. Breakthrough cases are covid infections and deaths among fully vaccinated individuals. As a point of reference, in the state of Massachusetts alone there have been over 262,000 fully vaccinated people who still ended up infected with covid and 1054 deaths according to official numbers. That is an infection fatality rate of 0.4%, which is HIGHER than the national average IFR of 0.27%.

  The most vaccinated countries in the world are also suffering from the worst infection spikes in the world. In Ireland, for example, over 63% of recent covid deaths were fully vaccinated individuals. In Israel, nearly 60% of covid hospitalizations are fully vaccinated. Uruguay, Bahrain, Maldives and Chile all have overwhelming majority vaccination rates and all of them have seen spikes in covid deaths and and infections. According to the UK government’s own stats, people who are triple vaxxed are 4.5 times more likely to be infected with Omicron than people who are unvaxxed.

  The average vaccine is tested for 10-15 years before it is approved for use on human beings, yet covid vaccines were released within months with no long term testing to prove their safety. It makes perfect sense for people to be concerned.

  So, I would ask the hacks at the LA Times: Should we be dancing on your graves when you die from covid despite all those miraculous untested vaccines? Or maybe when you end up dead and on the VAERS list due to vaccine side effects? Autoimmune disorders can take 2-4 years to gestate and be identified by doctors; maybe in 2024 you’ll be wishing you had taken a wait-and-see approach to the untested vaccines like all the smart people are doing?

  This is called logic, reason and science. The above data is beyond the mental grasp of many leftists and even when they do get it they ignore it. They have no interest in protecting your health or the health of the public, that’s not what this is about. What they care about is control and nothing would bring them more joy than to see 100% conformity and slavery to their ideals. They live vicariously through tyranny.

  The pandemic paranoia, the lockdowns, the mandates, Big Tech, social media, cancel culture are all means to an end. Leftists pretend they are humanitarians that care about the greater good, but this is a facade. It’s just another excuse to justify a deep seated thirst to micromanage the lives of others.

  A classic tactic of narcissistic sociopaths is to victimize and terrorize people, then accuse them of being monsters when those people snap back and rebel.   They are projecting their tyranny on the rest of us and label us the bad guys.  It’s time to end the theater and call leftists what they really are – They are the dictators they claim they are trying to fight.

  *  *  *

  If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 23:30

• Visualizing The $94 Trillion World Economy In One Chart
  Visualizing The $94 Trillion World Economy In One Chart

  Just four countries – the U.S., China, Japan, and Germany – make up over half of the world’s economic output by gross domestic product (GDP) in nominal terms. In fact, as Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld notes, the GDP of the U.S. alone is greater than the combined GDP of 170 countries.

  How do the different economies of the world compare? In this visualization we look at GDP by country in 2021, using data and estimates from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

  

  An Overview of GDP

  GDP serves as a broad indicator for a country’s economic output. It measures the total market value of final goods and services produced in a country in a specific timeframe, such as a quarter or year. In addition, GDP also takes into consideration the output of services provided by the government, such as money spent on defense, healthcare, or education.

  Generally speaking, when GDP is increasing in a country, it is a sign of greater economic activity that benefits workers and businesses (while the reverse is true for a decline).

  The World Economy: Top 50 Countries

  Who are the biggest contributors to the global economy? Here is the ranking of the 50 largest countries by GDP in 2021:

  

  *2020 GDP (latest available) used where IMF estimates for 2021 were unavailable.

  At $22.9 trillion, the U.S. GDP accounts for roughly 25% of the global economy, a share that has actually changed significantly over the last 60 years. The finance, insurance, and real estate ($4.7 trillion) industries add the most to the country’s economy, followed by professional and business services ($2.7 trillion) and government ($2.6 trillion).

  China’s economy is second in nominal terms, hovering at near $17 trillion in GDP. It remains the largest manufacturer worldwide based on output with extensive production of steel, electronics, and robotics, among others.

  The largest economy in Europe is Germany, which exports roughly 20% of the world’s motor vehicles. In 2019, overall trade equaled nearly 90% of the country’s GDP.

  The World Economy: 50 Smallest Countries

  On the other end of the spectrum are the world’s smallest economies by GDP, primarily developing and island nations.

  With a GDP of $70 million, Tuvalu is the smallest economy in the world. Situated between Hawaii and Australia, the largest industry of this volcanic archipelago relies on territorial fishing rights.

  In addition, the country earns significant revenue from its “.tv” web domain. Between 2011 and 2019, it earned $5 million annually from companies—including Amazon-owned Twitch to license the Twitch.tv domain name—equivalent to roughly 7% of the country’s GDP.

  

  *2019 GDP (latest available) used where IMF estimates for 2021 were unavailable.

  Like Tuvalu, many of the world’s smallest economies are in Oceania, including Nauru, Palau, and Kiribati. Additionally, several countries above rely on the tourism industry for over one-third of their employment.

  The Fastest Growing Economies in the World in 2021

  With 123% projected GDP growth, Libya’s economy is estimated to have the sharpest rise.

  Oil is propelling its growth, with 1.2 million barrels being pumped in the country daily. Along with this, exports and a depressed currency are among the primary factors behind its recovery.

  

  Ireland’s economy, with a projected 13% real GDP growth, is being supported by the largest multinational corporations in the world. Facebook, TikTok, Google, Apple, and Pfizer all have their European headquarters in the country, which has a 12.5% corporate tax rate—or about half the global average. But these rates are set to change soon, as Ireland joined the OECD 15% minimum corporate tax rate agreement which was finalized in October 2021.

  Macao’s economy bounced back after COVID-19 restrictions began to lift, but more storm clouds are on the horizon for the Chinese district. The CCP’s anti-corruption campaign and recent arrests could signal a more strained relationship between Mainland China and the world’s largest gambling hub.

  Looking Ahead at the World’s GDP

  The global GDP figure of $94 trillion may seem massive to us today, but such a total might seem much more modest in the future.

  In 1970, the world economy was only about $3 trillion in GDP—or 30 times smaller than it is today. Over the next thirty years, the global economy is expected to more or less double again. By 2050, global GDP could total close to $180 trillion.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 23:00

• The Lab Leak: The Plots & Schemes Of Jeremy Farrar, Anthony Fauci, And Francis Collins
  The Lab Leak: The Plots & Schemes Of Jeremy Farrar, Anthony Fauci, And Francis Collins

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

  Jeremy Farrar is a former professor at Oxford University and the head of the Wellcome Trust, an extremely influential non-government funder of medical research in the UK and a big investor in vaccine companies. 

  Some people regard Farrar as the UK’s Anthony Fauci. He had much to do with the pandemic response, including the lockdowns and mandates in the UK. For the entire pandemic ordeal, he has been in touch with his colleagues around the world. He has written a book (it appeared July 2021 but was probably written in the Spring) on his experience with the pandemic. 

  I reviewed already. 

  In general, the book is chaotic, strongly backing lockdowns without ever presenting a clear rationale for why, much less a road map for how to get out of lockdowns. I swear you could read this book carefully front to back and not know anything more about pandemics and their course than you had at the beginning. In this sense, the book is an abysmal failure, which probably explains why it is so little talked about. 

  That said, the book is revealing in other ways, some of which I did not cover in my review. He carefully presents the scene at the beginning of the pandemic, including the great fear that he, Fauci, and others had that the virus was not of natural origin. It might have been created in a lab and leaked, accidentally or deliberately. This awesome prospect is behind some of the strangest sentences in the book, which I quote here:

  By the second week of January, I was beginning to realise the scale of what was happening. I was also getting the uncomfortable feeling that some of the information needed by scientists all around the world to detect and fight this new disease was not being disclosed as fast as it could be. I did not know it then, but a fraught few weeks lay ahead.

  In those weeks, I became exhausted and scared. I felt as if I was living a different person’s life. During that period, I would do things I had never done before: acquire a burner phone, hold clandestine meetings, keep difficult secrets. I would have surreal conversations with my wife, Christiane, who persuaded me we should let the people closest to us know what was going on. I phoned my brother and best friend to give them my temporary number. In hushed conversations, I sketched out the possibility of a looming global health crisis that had the potential to be read as bioterrorism.

  ‘If anything happens to me in the next few weeks,’ I told them nervously, ‘this is what you need to know.’

  Sounds like a thriller movie! A burner phone? Clandestine meetings? What the heck is going on here? If there really was a virus on the loose and a looming crisis of public health, why would your first impulse be, as a famous guy and so on, to write about it, tell the public everything you know, inform every public health official, open up and prepare people, and get to work finding therapeutics that can save lives? Why would you not immediately investigate the demographics of risk and inform people and institutions of the best-possible response?

  What the heck is all this cloak-and-dagger about? Seems like a bad start for a responsible public policy. 

  The next chapter reveals some of the background to all this high dudgeon:

  In the last week of January 2020, I saw email chatter from scientists in the US suggesting the virus looked almost engineered to infect human cells. These were credible scientists proposing an incredible, and terrifying, possibility of either an accidental leak from a laboratory or a deliberate release….

  It seemed a huge coincidence for a coronavirus to crop up in Wuhan, a city with a superlab. Could the novel corona-virus be anything to do with ‘gain of function’ (GOF) studies? These are studies in which viruses are deliberately genetically engineered to become more contagious and then used to infect mammals like ferrets, to track how the modified virus spreads. They are carried out in top-grade containment labs like the one in Wuhan. Viruses that infect ferrets can also infect humans, precisely the reason ferrets are a good model for studying human infection in the first place. But GOF studies always carry a tiny risk of something going wrong: the virus leaking out of the lab, or a virus infecting a lab researcher who then goes home and spreads it….

  The novel coronavirus might not even be that novel at all. It might have been engineered years ago, put in a freezer, and then taken out more recently by someone who decided to work on it again. And then, maybe, there was … an accident? Labs can function for decades and often store samples for just as long. In 2014, six old vials of freeze-dried variola virus, which causes smallpox, were uncovered in a lab in Maryland, US; though the samples dated back to the 1950s, they still tested positive for variola DNA. Some viruses and microbes are disturbingly resilient. It sounded crazy but once you get into a mindset it becomes easy to connect things that are unrelated. You begin to see a pattern that is only there because of your own starting bias. And my starting bias was that it was odd for a spillover event, from animals to humans, to take off in people so immediately and spectacularly – in a city with a biolab. One standout molecular feature of the virus was a region in the genome sequence called a furin cleavage site, which enhances infectivity. This novel virus, spreading like wildfire, seemed almost designed to infect human cells….

  The idea that an unnatural, highly contagious pathogen could have been unleashed, either by accident or design, catapulted me into a world that I had barely navigated before. This issue needed urgent attention from scientists – but it was also the territory of the security and intelligence services….

  When I told Eliza about the suspicions over the origins of the new coronavirus, she advised that everyone involved in the delicate conversations should raise our guard, security-wise. We should use different phones; avoid putting things in emails; and ditch our normal email addresses and phone contacts.

  Keep in mind, we are talking here about the last week of January. The top experts in the world were living in fear that this was actually a lab leak and perhaps a deliberate one. This consumed them completely, knowing full well that if this were true, we could see something close to a world war developing. And then the question comes up concerning responsibility. 

  

  Let’s move to the next chapter:

  The next day, I contacted Tony Fauci about the rumours over the origins of the virus and asked him to speak with Kristian Andersen at Scripps. We agreed that a bunch of specialists needed to urgently look into it. We needed to know if this virus came from nature or was a product of deliberate nurture, followed by either accidental or intentional release from the BSL-4 lab based at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

  Depending on what the experts thought, Tony added, the FBI and MI5 would need to be told. I remember becoming a little nervous about my own personal safety around this time. I don’t really know what I was scared of. But extreme stress is not conducive to thinking rationally or behaving logically. I was exhausted from living in two parallel universes – my day-to-day life at Wellcome in London, and then going back home to Oxford and having these clandestine conversations at night with people on opposite sides of the world. 

  Eddie in Sydney would be working when Kristian in California was asleep, and vice versa. I didn’t just feel as if I was working a 24-hour day – I really was. On top of that, we were getting phonecalls through the night from all over the world. Christiane was loosely keeping a diary and recorded 17 calls in one night. It’s hard to come off nocturnal calls about the possibility of a lab leak and go back to bed. 

  I’d never had trouble sleeping before, something that comes from spending a career working as a doctor in critical care and medicine. But the situation with this new virus and the dark question marks over its origins felt emotionally overwhelming. None of us knew what was going to happen but things had already escalated into an international emergency. On top of that, just a few of us – Eddie, Kristian, Tony and I – were now privy to sensitive information that, if proved to be true, might set off a whole series of events that would be far bigger than any of us. It felt as if a storm was gathering, of forces beyond anything I had experienced and over which none of us had any control.

  Well, there we go. Was there ever a doubt that Fauci and so on were consumed by fear that this was a lab leak from their own colleagues and friends in Wuhan? Has he denied this? I’m not sure but this account from Farrar is pretty extraordinary proof that discovering the virus’s origins was the major concern from these official and influential scientists for the last part of January through February. Rather than thinking about things such as “How can we help doctors deal with patients?” and “Who is vulnerable to this virus and what should we say about that?”, they were consumed by discovering the origin of the virus and hiding from the public what they were doing. 

  Again, I am not interpreting things here. I’m only quoting what Farrar says in his own book. He reports that the experts he consulted were 80% sure it had come from a lab. They all scheduled an online meeting for February 1, 2020. 

  Patrick Vallance informed the intelligence agencies of the suspicions; Eddie did the same in Australia. Tony Fauci copied in Francis Collins, who heads the US National Institutes of Health (the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, which Tony heads, is part of the NIH). Tony and Francis understood the extreme sensitivity of what was being suggested,…

  The next day I gathered everyone’s thoughts, including people like Michael Farzan, and emailed Tony and Francis: “On a spectrum if 0 is nature and 100 is release – I am honestly at 50! My guess is that this will remain grey, unless there is access to the Wuhan lab – and I suspect that is unlikely!”

  These discussions and investigations continue for the whole month of February. This explains so much about why health officials in so many countries were entering into panic mode rather than calmly addressing an emerging problem in public health. They spent all their energies on discerning the origin of the virus. Were they worried that they would be implicated due to financial ties? I don’t really know and Farrar doesn’t go into that. 

  Regardless, it took them a full month before this small group finally came out with what appeared to be a definitive paper appearing in Nature: The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2. The date it appeared was March 17, 2020. That was the day following the announcement of lockdowns in the US. We now know that the paper was written as early as February 4, and went through many drafts over the coming weeks, including edits by Anthony Fauci himself. That paper has since been debated very extensively. It was hardly the last word. 

  What strikes me most in retrospect concerning the idea of the lab leak is the following. During the most critical weeks leading up to the obvious spread of the virus all over the Northeast of the U.S., leading to incredible carnage in nursing homes due to egregious policies that failed to protect the vulnerable and even deliberately infected them, public health officials in the US and UK were consumed not with a proper health response but with fear of dealing with the probability that this virus was man-made in China. 

  They deliberated in secret. They used burner phones. They spoke only to their trusted colleagues.

  This went on for more than a month from late January 2020 to early March. Whether this virus originated as a lab leak or not in this case is not so much the issue; there is no question that Farrar, Collins, Fauci, and company all believed that it was likely and even probable, and they spent their time and energies plotting the spin.

  This fear consumed them entirely at the very moment when their job was to be thinking of the best public-health response. 

  Maybe their time should have been about telling the truth as they knew it? Explaining how to deal rationally with the coming virus? Helping people who are vulnerable protect themselves while explaining to everyone else that there is no point in panicking? 

  Instead, in the midst of the panic they both felt and then projected to the public, they urged and got lockdowns of the world’s economy, a policy response never before attempted on this scale in response to a virus.

  The virus did what the virus does, and all we are left with are the breathtaking results of the pandemic response: economic carnage, cultural destruction, large amounts of unnecessary death, and an incredible paper trail of incompetence, fear, secrecy, plotting, and neglect of genuine health concerns. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 22:30

• FedEx Wants To Arm Cargo Planes With Anti-Missile Lasers
  FedEx Wants To Arm Cargo Planes With Anti-Missile Lasers

  International logistics giant FedEx seeks permission to mount a laser weapon system on the exterior of cargo planes as a countermeasure against heat-seeking missiles, according to an unpublished Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposal in the Federal Register. 

  

  The unpublished document, titled “FedEx Express, Airbus Model A321-200 Airplanes; Installation of an Infrared Laser Countermeasure System,” is set to be released by the FAA on Jan. 18, explains how the logistics company wants to install the laser weapon on at least one Airbus A321-200 freighter that would be used to direct laser energy toward heat-seeking missiles as a countermeasure. 

  This action proposes special conditions for the Airbus Model A321-200 airplane. This airplane, as modified by FedEx Express (FedEx), will have a novel or unusual design feature when compared to the state of technology envisioned in the airworthiness standards for transport category airplanes. This design feature is a system that emits infrared laser energy outside the aircraft as a countermeasure against heat-seeking missiles. The applicable airworthiness regulations do not contain adequate or appropriate safety standards for this design feature. These proposed special conditions contain the additional safety standards that the Administrator considers necessary to establish a level of safety equivalent to that established by the existing airworthiness standards.

  “In recent years, in several incidents abroad, civilian aircraft were fired upon by man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS),” the unpublished document said. In 2020, Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was shot down by a military-grade surface-to-air missile near Tehran, Iran. 

  “This has led several companies to design and adapt systems like a laser-based missile-defense system for installation on civilian aircraft, to protect those aircraft against heat-seeking missiles. The FedEx missile-defense system directs infrared laser energy toward an incoming missile, in an effort to interrupt the missile’s tracking of the aircraft’s heat,” it continued. 

  The move to equip planes with laser countermeasures could allow them to fly in highly contested air space that would usually be off-limits, a move that could save FedEx time and money. 

  

  As the world becomes a more dangerous place by the day, it’s only a matter of time before civilian airlines adopt such technology. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 22:00

• China's True COVID-19 Death Toll 366 Times Higher Than Official Figure, Analyst Says
  China’s True COVID-19 Death Toll 366 Times Higher Than Official Figure, Analyst Says

  Authored by Eva Fu and David Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Chinese regime has likely understated the COVID-19 death rate by as much as 17,000 percent in a systematic data suppression campaign to sustain its political image, according to a U.S. analyst.

  

  That would put the number of COVID-19 deaths in China at around 1.7 million rather than 4,636, the two-year cumulative death figure that the Chinese authorities have maintained on the books. That’s 366 times the official figure.

  Those findings made by George Calhoun, director of the quantitative finance program at Stevens Institute of Technology, were based on data as of January generated by a model developed by The Economist.

  A vast majority of China’s officially recorded deaths came from Wuhan during the first three months of the pandemic, with only hundreds more reported in the rest of the country.

  The Chinese regime only reported two additional deaths since April 1, 2020, ranking China as having the world’s lowest COVID-19 death rate, which Zhong Nanshan, the Chinese epidemiologist overseeing China’s outbreak response, boasted about just last week.

  But that jaw-dropping data point—hundreds of times lower than that of America, gave Calhoun pause.

  “That’s impossible. It’s medically impossible, it’s statistically impossible,” Calhoun told NTD, an affiliate of The Epoch Times.

  

  “Remember, in 2020, there was no vaccine, there was no treatment,” he said. “So you had an unprotected population that has shown zero COVID deaths, even though they’ve had tens of thousands of cases.”

  Curating public records and previous research reports, and analyzing the regime’s pattern of hushing up scandals in the past, Calhoun arrived at a conclusion that to him seems obvious: China has made its “zero-COVID” policy a political objective, and is systematically falsifying data to prop up the claim.

  “Somebody put a message out at the end of the first quarter and 2020 and said, ‘Okay, we want to see zero-COVID. That’s our policy.’ And it became zero-COVID,” he said.

  Anomalies

  The first “smoking gun” is a sudden drop of COVID-19 deaths since April 2020 from mainland China after a “raging” rate of infection, Calhoun said.

  From April 1, 2020, to Jan. 8, 2022, over 22,102 cases have been reported in mainland China, according to data from Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Only two deaths were recorded over the same period.

  By comparison, Hong Kong, which counted about half as many COVID-19 infections over the period, reported 213 deaths.

  The case fatality rate (the proportion of those infected who died) in Wuhan during the first three months of the pandemic averaged around 7.7 percent, more than five times that of the United States and four times the world average.

  

  Two scenarios are possible: either the virus was “far more deadly in early 2020 in Wuhan than anywhere else, at any other time,” or alternatively, the official infection numbers from China were too small by a factor of three or four, Calhoun said.

  Over the following 20 months, there has been a consistent lack of COVID-19 data from China. As of September, China has become the world’s only country that has not provided complete data on excess mortality—unexplained deaths beyond normal trends that can offer a crude estimate of uncounted COVID deaths, a survey from the University of Washington shows.

  The Economist model seeks to make up for that data gap. Based on the model, Calhoun said China’s excess mortality was off by about 17,000 percent. This discrepancy, he added, surpasses those even by countries mired in large-scale civil unrest, such as Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Venezuela, which has undercounted the COVID-19 mortality rate by up to 1,100 percent.

  

  Undercounting virus deaths is widespread across countries. Based on The Economist’s model, the United States’ official tally is short by about 30 percent. But China’s case is extreme.

  “They are through the roof,” Calhoun said of the discrepancy between China’s official figures and the estimated true death toll.

  “Something’s driving that,” Calhoun said.

  While the virus might not be all to blame for the jump, tight-lipped Chinese authorities have offered few clues as to what might have happened otherwise.

  Calhoun’s estimate coincides with anecdotal evidence from local residents, troves of internal documents leaked to The Epoch Times, and research studies into the impact of the virus in China, all of which indicate that the official figures have been grossly understated.

  During the early months when the pandemic first broke out in China’s Wuhan, some of the city’s funeral home workers told The Epoch Times they were working nonstop to cremate bodies. In March, thousands of ash urns were delivered to one of the crematoriums, when the official death number was over 2,000. The authorities raised the fatality figure by 50 percent a month later, attributing the gap to administrative inefficiencies.

  

  A study published in The Lancet last March said as many as 968,800 people in Wuhan had antibodies by April 2020, which would mean they developed immunity to the virus after being infected.

  The data inconsistencies are not limited to Wuhan alone. During a two-week period in February 2020, an internal document from Shandong health authorities showed that close to 2,000 people had tested positive for the virus, but only 755 infections were publicly recorded.

  Leaked documents suggest that the regime has continued to deem virus control as a political task.

  In files recently obtained by The Epoch Times, a top Chinese official of Shaanxi Province, where the virus-hit Xi’an is the capital, ordered the “toughest measures” to be put in place to block the virus’ further spread from Xi’an. With the Beijing Winter Olympics coming up, a spillover would create “systemic risk” and “smear the national image,” the document read.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 21:30

• So You Want A Career In Finance?
  So You Want A Career In Finance?

  Corporate finance is a key pillar on which modern markets and economies have been built. And, as Visual Capitalist’s Aran Ali details below, this complex ecosystem consists of a number of important sectors, which can lead to lucrative career avenues.

  From lending to investment banking, and private equity to hedge funds, the graphic above by Wall Street Prep breaks down the key finance careers and paths that people can take.

  

  Let’s take a further look at the unique pieces of this finance ecosystem.

  The Lending Business

  Lending groups provide much needed capital to corporations, often in the form of term loans or revolvers. These can be part of short and long-term operations or for events less anticipated like the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in companies shoring up $222 billion in revolving lines of credit within the first month.

  Investment Banking

  Next, is investment banking, which can split into three main areas:

  1. Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A): There’s a lot of preparation and paperwork involved whenever corporations merge or make acquisitions. For that reason, this is a crucial service that investment banks provide, and its importance is reflected in the enormous fees recognized. The top five U.S. investment banks collect $10.2 billion in M&A advisory fees, representing 40% of the $25 billion in global M&A fees per year.

  2. Loan Syndications: Some $16 billion in loan syndication fees are collected annually by investment banks. Loan syndications are when multiple lenders fund one borrower, which can occur when the loan amount is too large or risky for one party to take on. The loan syndication agent is the financial institution involved that acts as the third party to oversee the transaction.

  3. Capital Markets: Capital markets are financial markets that bring buyers and sellers together to engage in transactions on assets. They split into debt capital markets (DCM) like bonds or fixed income securities and equity capital markets (ECM) (i.e. stocks). Some $41 billion is collected globally for the services associated with structuring and distributing stock and bond offerings.

  The top investment banks generally all come from the U.S. and Western Europe, and includes the likes of Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse.

  Sell Side vs Buy Side

  Thousands of analysts in corporate finance represent both the buy and sell-sides of the business, but what are the differences between them?

  One important difference is in the groups they represent. Buy-side analysts usually work for institutions that buy securities directly, like hedge funds, while sell-side analysts represent institutions that make their money by selling or issuing securities, like investment banks.

  According to Wall Street Prep, here’s how the assets of buy-side institutions compare:

  

   

  Also, buy-side jobs appear to be more sought after across financial career forums.

  Breaking Down The Buy Side

  Mutual funds, ETFs, and hedge funds all generally invest in public markets.

  But between them, there are still some differentiating factors. For starters, mutual funds are the largest entity, and have been around since 1924. Hedge funds didn’t come to life until around 1950 and for ETFs, this stretched to the 1990s.

  Furthermore, hedge funds are strict in the clients they take on, with a preference for high net worth investors, and they often engage in sophisticated investment strategies like short selling. In contrast, ETFs, and mutual funds are widely available to the public and the vast bulk of them only deploy long strategies, which are those that expect the asset to rise in value.

  Private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) are groups that invest in private companies. Venture capital is technically a form of PE but tends to invest in new startup companies while private equity goes for more stable and mature companies with predictable cash flow patterns.

  Who funds the buy side? The source of capital roughly breaks down as follows:

  

   

  Endowment funds are foundations that invest the assets of nonprofit institutions like hospitals or universities. The assets are typically accumulated through donations, and withdrawals are made frequently to fund various parts of operations, including critical ones like research.

  The largest university endowment belongs to Harvard with some $74 billion in assets under management. However, the largest endowment fund overall belongs to Ensign Peak Advisors. They represent The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), with some $124 billion in assets.

  Primary Market vs Secondary Market

  One of the primary motivations for a company to enter the public markets is to raise capital, where a slice of the company’s ownership is sold via an allotment of shares to new investors. The actual capital itself is raised in the primary market, which represents the first and initial transaction.

  The secondary market represents transactions after the first. These are considered stocks that are already issued, and shares now fluctuate based on market forces.

  Tying It All Together

  As the infographic above shows, corporate finance branches out far and wide, handles trillions of dollars, and plays a key part in making modern markets and economies possible.

  For those exploring a career in finance, the possibilities and avenues one can take are practically endless.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 21:00

• Hospital System Drops Race-Based COVID Treatment Policy After Lawsuit Threats
  Hospital System Drops Race-Based COVID Treatment Policy After Lawsuit Threats

  Authored by Rick Moran via PJMedia.com,

  One of the largest hospital systems in the country is dropping its policy that counted race as a more important factor in determining COVID-19 treatment options than diabetes, obesity, asthma, and hypertension combined.

  

  This silliness was allowed at SSM Health, a nominally Catholic health system that operates 23 hospitals across Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin. All hospital patients are “scored” as a means of triage in order to give those most in need priority treatment. SSM Health ignored the severity of a patient’s conditions in order to make race a weightier determining factor.

  Washington Free Beacon:

  SSM Health, a Catholic health system that operates 23 hospitals across Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin, began using the scoring system last year to allocate scarce doses of Regeneron, the antibody cocktail that President Donald Trump credited for his recovery from COVID-19. A patient must score at least 20 points to qualify for the drug. The rubric gives three points to patients with diabetes, one for obesity, one for asthma, and one for hypertension, for a total of six points. Identifying as “Non-White or Hispanic” race, on the other hand, nets a patient seven points, regardless of age or underlying conditions.

  As an ignorant layman, I would ask why in God’s name this isn’t considered radically unethical. But apparently, unequal outcomes between races trumps ethics and common sense when treating illness.

  SSM Health gave a statement to the Free Beacon that denied using the race-based scoring system (they stopped using it last year). But they defended the practice anyway, stating that “early versions of risk calculators across the nation appropriately included race and gender criteria based on initial outcomes.”

  The way the scoring system was used in practice was astonishingly stupid.

  According to an internal memo obtained by the Free Beacon, the SSM scoring system was “based off the Utah Hospital Association and Utah Health Risk Stratification criteria,” which automatically gave two extra points to minority patients—the same amount as diabetes and obesity. The now-defunct rubric is much more radical, prioritizing healthy minorities over white patients with many of the largest risk factors for COVID-19. A 49-year-old white woman with hypertension, obesity, diabetes, and asthma would only get 19 points under the rubric, just shy of the 20 point threshold for antibody therapy. But a 50-year-old black woman with no underlying health conditions would receive 22 points, making her eligible.

  Was this really necessary? The radical left talking point is that people of color are dying of COVID-19 more often than white people (“racism,” of course), and unequal outcomes must be addressed in the name of “social justice.”

  Phooey.

  And while blacks, Hispanics, and Asians are more likely than whites to be hospitalized for COVID, they are less likely to die of it, according to a recent analysis of 4.3 million patients.

  Other studies have found that racial disparities in COVID outcomes disappear when researchers control for comorbidities and income.

  “Black race was not associated with higher in-hospital mortality than white race,” an analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded, “after adjustment for differences in sociodemographic and clinical characteristics on admission.” A study of Maryland and District of Columbia hospitals likewise found no relationship between race and severe disease “after adjustment for clinical factors.”

  Dan Lennington, a lawyer for the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, says, “It’s amazing that we even need to say it, but doctors should treat the individual patient, not the skin color.”

  Amen to that.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 20:30

• Virginia's New AG Fires Civil Rights Division, Will Start Prosecuting Cases Dropped By 'Social Justice' DAs
  Virginia’s New AG Fires Civil Rights Division, Will Start Prosecuting Cases Dropped By ‘Social Justice’ DAs

  Within hours of taking office, Virginia’s newly sworn-in Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) cleaned house – firing dozens of lawyers, including those in the Civil Rights division – and announcing investigations into the Virginia Parole Board and Loudon County Public Schools.

  

  “I’ve been told incoming AG @JasonMiyaresVA just FIRED the entire civil rights division in the Attorney General’s office,” tweeted VA State Senator Louise Lucas.

  I’ve been told incoming AG @JasonMiyaresVA just FIRED the entire civil rights division in the Attorney General’s office. My bill helped create and expand the authority that this division uses.

  — L. Louise Lucas (@SenLouiseLucas) January 14, 2022

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  According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Miyares notified around 30 staff members they’re being let go – including 17 attorneys and 13 staff members. The attorneys include the solicitor general, Herring’s deputies, and reportedly Helen Hardiman – an assistant AG who worked on housing discrimination.

  Miyares, who will take over Democratic AG Mark Herring, campaigned on a promise to pursue legislation that would enable state AGs to circumvent “social justice” attorneys who refuse to vigorously prosecute crimes. As Fox News noted in November, “Under current law, the AG’s office can prosecute a case on behalf of a commonwealth’s attorney – Virginia’s version of a district attorney (DA) – so long as the DA requests it.”

  “George Soros-backed commonwealth’s attorneys are not doing their jobs,” said Miyares in May 2021 comments to the Arlington County Republican Committee.

  Liberal billionaire George Soros has repeatedly poured thousands into prosecutor’s races in Virginia. In 2019, Soros provided a significant cash infusion to three winning progressive candidates, Parisa Dehghani-Tafti in Arlington County (nearly $1 million from Soros); Buta Biberaj in Loudon County ($850,000 from Soros); and Steve Descano in Fairfax County ($600,000 from Soros). Soros spent about $200,000 in a prosecutor’s race in Norfolk this year. His candidate went on to win the race. -Fox News

  When reached for comment, Miyares spokesperson Victoria LaCivita said: “During the campaign, it was made clear that now Attorney General-elect Miyares and Attorney General Herring have very different visions for the office,” adding “We are restructuring the office, as every incoming AG has done in the past.”

  In a Saturday statement just houtrs after Miyares and GOP Gov. Glenn Younkin were sworn in, he explained why he launched the investigations into the parole board and the school district.

  “One of the reasons Virginians get so fed up with government is the lack of transparency – and that’s a big issue here,” he wrote. “The Virginia Parole Board broke the law when they let out murders, rapists, and cop killers early on their sentences without notifying the victims. Loudoun Country Public Schools covered up a sexual assault on school grounds for political gain, leading to an additional assault of a young girl.”

  Loudoun County became a focal point in Youngkin’s gubernatorial race against former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe following the arrest of a 14-year-old male high school student, who identifies as nonbinary, who has been found guilty of raping a female student in a school bathroom. That student was transferred to another school where he allegedly raped another student and the district has been accused of covering up the crime which resulted in one of the alleged victim’s parents being arrested at a school board meeting. The offending student has been placed on the sex offenders registry for life as part of his sentence. –Fox News

  Meanwhile, within hours of his inauguration, Governor Glenn Youngkin signed 11 executive actions – including lifting the mask mandate in Virginia schools, and “ending divisive concepts, including critical race theory, in public education.”

  As Terri Wu via the Epoch Times reports:

  He also signed an executive directive rescinding the vaccine mandate for all state employees.

  The 55-year-old former business executive, in his inauguration speech at Richmond, emphasized a “common path forward” with “our deep and abiding respect for individual freedom.” Youngkin vowed to strengthen and renew the “spirit of Virginia” associated with the history of the state as the home of American democracy. He credited Virginians with the spirit of tenacity, grit, and resilience.

  Youngkin said he was “ready to lead and serve, starting on day one,” and it would start in the classroom to get Virginia’s children “career and college ready.” The crowd of an estimated size of 6,000 burst into a loud cheer upon hearing from Youngkin that he would “remove politics from the classroom.”

  “Virginia is open for business,” Youngkin promised to create 400,000 new jobs and 10,000 new startups in the four years of his administration by reducing regulations and increasing job-related training.

  According to him, residents of the commonwealth will see the “largest tax rebate in Virginia’s history.” In addition, he promised to “fully fund” and “return respect to” law enforcement.

  ‘Hope’ and ‘Optimism’

  Voters echoed the sentiment of “hope” and “optimism” highlighted in Youngkin’s speech.

  “I’m excited because we have somebody in here who’s willing to fight like we do, just on a higher level,” said Shirley Green, a public relations specialist, while waiting to join the inauguration ceremony. Improving the school system was the first step she wanted the new administration to take. And she was “optimistic” that the Youngkin administration would deliver their campaign promise because of their “humility” and “passion for Virginians.”

  Green grew up as a Democrat in the District of Columbia metropolitan area but became a conservative 13 years ago. She said she had found the Democratic Party having a different vision than “working for the people.”

  

  “I feel great. It’s a great day for Virginia,” said Joe. He and his wife attended the inauguration ceremony in “Youngkin vests,” the same style of fleece vests Youngkin often wore on his campaign trail. The couple owns a local safety business and prefers not to disclose their names. The previous Virginia administration “didn’t always take in consideration of the people” in its decision-making, said the wife.

  “Education is the number one concern,” she said, adding that parents among their employees and employees at their client organizations—Republicans, independents, and Democrats—voted for Youngkin “because of their concerns for their families.”

  Aiden Sheahan and Alyson Bucker with the University of Virginia were among a group of five college students and graduates who also attended the ceremony. They made phone calls and door-to-door visits for the Youngkin campaign. Sheahan said he saw “a lot of optimism” during the campaign; people had hopes that many things, including jobs, the standard of living, and policies, would change with the new governor.

  The group described the new Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears, a black American who immigrated from Jamaica, as “confident” and “powerful.”

  “She doesn’t use her skin color, her circumstances, or her identity to promote herself. She used her accomplishments, rather than something she cannot control, to promote herself,” added Matthew Carpenter, a recent college graduate from Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.

  Challenges from Day One

  The former executive who campaigned as a political outsider will face challenges working with a state legislature with divided party control, and some priorities facing deadlocks.

  The General Assembly session began on Jan. 12, with a newly empowered Republican majority (52–48) in the State House, and a Senate where Democrats still hold a 21–19 majority.

  In the next 60 days, lawmakers will review and adopt a two-year state budget proposed by former Governor Ralph Northam on Dec. 16. Youngkin has already said “the recognition of the need for tax cuts is understated” in Northam’s plan.

  The new Speaker of the House Todd Gilbert announced education, inflation, and public safety as Virginia House GOP’s agenda for 2022. By comparison, House Democrats’ “top priority is to protect the advances they made against Republican efforts to roll them back,” in three key areas: supporting public schools, keeping families healthy, and ensuring economic security for all.

  With a Democrat-controlled House and Senate in the past two years, former Democratic Governor Northam signed into law in 2020 a series of liberal measures, including increased gun control, lifting abortion restrictions, and relaxed voter requirements.

  “I think we have a Governor-elect who is going to come in and do something about some of our school problems, introduce our freedoms, and be more protective of law enforcement. And I think that gives us a lot of hope,” veteran Republican State Senator Steve Newman told ABC13 a day before the inauguration.

  An inaugural parade followed the ceremony. On Sunday, the three-day events will close with an open house at the governor’s mansion. Along with Youngkin, Winsome Sears was sworn in on Saturday as the Lieutenant Governor and Jason Miyares as the Attorney General. Sears will hold the tie-breaking vote in the State Senate.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 20:00

• RSV More Prevalent Than COVID-19 In Colorado Children: Chief Medical Officer
  RSV More Prevalent Than COVID-19 In Colorado Children: Chief Medical Officer

  Authored by Meiling Lee via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is affecting children in Colorado more than COVID-19, according to a chief medical officer of Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children.

  “RSV is very contagious and very prevalent in the school system as well as throughout daycare centers and in homes,” Dr. Reginald Washington told FOX31 KDVR-TV on Jan. 12, adding that “COVID is increasing in its prevalence” and impacting children the second most, with the adenovirus being third.

  

  RSV is a common respiratory virus that causes cold-like symptoms in people of all ages. Doctors say that the virus is so common that many children will have been infected with it before they are two years old.

  RSV is mild in most children and goes away in a week or two but for some—who are immunocompromised or have a lung or heart disease—it can be quite severe.

  RSV outbreaks usually occur from the fall through the spring, but an increase in RSV cases across the Southern parts of the United States prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to issue a health advisory in June 2021.

  Other countries also experienced a spike in RSV out of season. Public Health England, responsible for improving and protecting the country’s health and wellbeing, issued a notice encouraging parents “to look out for symptoms of severe infection in at-risk children” in July 2021. The agency says the increase was a result of the “various restrictions in place [during the winter of 2020] to reduce the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19), there were far fewer infections in younger people” that “many will not have developed immunity.”

  Doctors in Queensland, Australia saw a significant rise in RSV cases in children between January and April of last year. Summer in Australia began Dec. 1, 2020, and ended on Feb. 28, 2021. The northeastern state recorded a total of 378 RSV cases in 2021 compared to 88 cases for all of 2019 and 70 cases in 2020.

  Dr. Damian Roland, honorary professor of pediatric emergency medicine at Leicester University said that regardless of the disease, the focus should be on the signs and symptoms of the child, and not making parents afraid of the illness.

  “From [the] parent point of view [it] doesn’t matter if [the] child has RSV, #COVID19 or [an]other virus. Decision making should be on their wellness not the disease,” Roland said on Twitter on Jan. 12.

  He added, “My comment is we are creating fear in parents of particular diseases rather than how their child is. If your child has fever but is well & drinking the cause of that fever is irrelevant (but please get a COVID test as per national policy).”

  Dr. Lynora Saxinger, infectious diseases expert and associate professor at the University of Alberta listed the symptoms that parents should be aware of and when to bring their child to the doctor or call Emergency Medical Services.

  “Listen. Red flag symptoms for KIDS with virus infection: (Both RSV which is generally tough at this time of year, and has come back after a year off, and COVID19): my colleagues are seeing BOTH viruses causing ‘croup’—even in older kids,” Saxinger wrote on Twitter on Jan. 12.

  Listen
  🚩 red flag symptoms for KIDS with virus infection:
  (Both RSV which is generally tough at this time of year, and has come back after a year off, and COVID19):
  my colleagues are seeing BOTH viruses causing “croup”- even in older kids. Respiratory viruses usually
  1/ pic.twitter.com/XTc31Jmaph

  — Dr. Lynora Saxinger 🇨🇦 *answers DM not mentions (@AntibioticDoc) January 12, 2022

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  RSV causes “an estimated 33.1 million acute lower respiratory tract infections worldwide and 3.2 million hospitalizations in children under 5 years,” according to The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.

  The CDC says that there is currently no specific treatment for infection with RSV, but the World Health Organization (WHO) says that a vaccine may be “available in the near future.”

  “Fortunately, several vaccine candidates are now in the human testing phase targeting young children, older adults, and pregnant women, and an effective safe vaccine is likely to be available in the near future,” the WHO said.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 19:30

• How Goldman Is Convincing Its Clients Not To Freak Out About Fed Rate Hikes
  How Goldman Is Convincing Its Clients Not To Freak Out About Fed Rate Hikes

  Rate hikes are now just right around the corner and traders are freaking out, but not so fast according to Goldman.

  Following the FOMC meeting in mid-December, and especially last week’s FOMC minutes and the subsequent jawboning by various Fed officials,, it has become clear that the Fed will not only double the pace of tapering but also signaled three hikes in 2022. As a result, virtually all sell-side economists – even stern holdouts such as Morgan Stanley and Bank of America – have raised their forecast from three hikes in 2022 to four – with the first hike now expected to occur in March. Their forecast reflects the greater sense of urgency on behalf of FOMC participants towards quelling inflation, which rose to a four-decade high of 7% as measured by the latest year/year CPI. Why this urgency? Because as one can imagine, Biden was very clear in what Powell’s mandate was when he was renominated: “crush inflation as it is crushing my approval ratings”, because as BofA’s Michael Hartnett noted on Friday, “US inflation is up from 1.4% to 7.0%, while Biden’s approval rating is down from 56% to 42% past 12 months.”

  

  But why is the Fed rushing to hike when a growing chorus of economists now agrees with us that the Fed is hiking right into a recession (or alternatively, hiking to create a recession) an observation that was validated by Friday’s dismal retail sales data… and even without validation, the endgame is clear: as David Rosenberg noted recently, every time the US has had 5%+ inflation, it ended in recession.

  Inflation is 7% and the last time this happened, we had a double-dip recession. Prior to the pandemic, 5%+ inflation presaged all seven recessions over the past sixty years. Les jeux sont faits. #Economy #Inflation #DavidRosenberg #RosenbergResearch #RRMacro pic.twitter.com/ZXXjCARL9D

  — David Rosenberg (@EconguyRosie) January 13, 2022

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  Well, according to Goldman’s David Kostin, the unprecedented strength of the labor market has made the Fed more sensitive to high inflation and less sensitive to slowing growth. Alongside rising inflation, the Fed has also cited strong employment data as a catalyst for earlier liftoff and balance sheet reduction. The unemployment rate now stands at 3.9%, falling slightly below the FOMC’s 4.0% median estimate of its long-term level (although looking ahead, Kostin notes that surveys of workers and businesses indicate wage growth is expected to slow to about 4% this year).

  To be sure, the market already reflects this and real and nominal rates have both jumped in anticipation of the upcoming tightening cycle. Since the December FOMC meeting, the 10-year US Treasury yield has surged by 26 bp to 1.77%. Consistent with historical experience, equities have struggled amid this rapid rise in yields, and the fastest-growing and longest-duration pockets of the market – i.e., the biggest bubbles such as profiless tech names, the ARKK ETFs, SPACs and so on – have de-rated most.

  As a quick aside, perhaps the main reason for the equity puke in the past two weeks is not so much the jump in absolute yield in the past month, but the speed of the move. As Goldman showed in a separate report earlier this week (also available to professional subs), regardless of the level of interest rates, equities react poorly to sharp changes in the interest rate environment, and the past week has been no exception: “Historically, equity prices have declined when interest rates rose by two standard deviations or more. This is true for both nominal and real interest rates across both weekly and monthly periods. The two standard deviation threshold was exceeded on both horizons last week, and the accompanying equity weakness followed the usual historical pattern.”

  

  But while that may explain short-term moves, surely higher rates will lead to longer-term weakness no matter what. And while the answer is yes, the next table shows the sensitivity of the S&P 500 forward P/E multiple to various interest rate and ERP scenarios. Goldman’s interest rate strategists forecast a continued rise in real interest rates that will lift the nominal 10-year Treasury yield to 2% by year-end 2022 (more below), however they also expect the ERP to compress modestly from current levels as the pandemic recovery continues and economic policy uncertainty surrounding potential reconciliation legislation passes. In this base case scenario, the S&P 500 P/E multiple would remain roughly flat this year, allowing earnings growth to lift the index price level. But, if the ERP were to rise to its 10-year median and the Treasury yield rises to 2.25%, the P/E multiple would compress by roughly 15% to 17x, and not even Goldman can spin that as positive.

  

  In any case, as Kostin writes in his latest Weekly Kickstart, market pricing and client conversations indicate investors are braced for a string of hikes in 2022, and as a result, questions from Goldman clients during the past two weeks “have focused on the relationship between equities and interest rates, indicating that the hawkish FOMC pivot is being actively assessed by equity investors.” Moreover, the overnight index swap (OIS) market is currently pricing 3.6 rate hikes in 2022 and 2.6 in 2023, just below the 4 and 3 hikes, respectively, that Goldman forecasts (spoiler alert: the total number of rate hikes will be far less once stocks crash).

  

  And this is where Goldman enters the bullish spin cycle, because the bank makes much more money when its clients buy (only to sell in the future), than selling now. So to ease client concerns that the bottom is about to fall off the market, Kostin writes that “historically” (because clearly we have had many “historical examples” when the Fed’s balance sheet was 45% of US GDP), the S&P 500 index has been resilient around the start of Fed hiking cycles, noting that “although the index has returned -6% on average during the three months following the first hike of recent cycles, the weakness has been short-lived as returns average +5% during the six months following the first hike.” Moreover, as Goldman shows in exhibit 3, the S&P 500 P/E is typically flat during the 12 months around the first hike.

  

  Drilling down into segments, Goldman notes that cyclical sectors and Value stocks outperform around the first Fed hike. The reason: the start of Fed hiking cycles (usually) tends to coincide with a strong economy, which can help to lift cyclical sectors (Materials, Industrials, Energy). However, this time around it is starting as the economy is rapidly slowing yet inflation remains stubborn due to supply-chain blockages, and as such anything Goldman suggests you should do, please ignore it.

  Which is probably also true for factors. According to Kostin, at the factor level, Value stocks tend to outperform in the months before and after the first hike: “High quality factors (e.g., high margins, strong balance sheets) underperform in the strong economic environment preceding hikes and outperform in the months following the initial rate increase. Growth is the worst performing factor in the 6 months around the first hike.” Here too, we would flip this 180 degrees because the Fed is now hiking to effectively start a recession (or as the US is already en route to one), so what one should be selling is value while buying growth ahead of the next rate cuts/QE which are now just a matter of time.

  

  Next, Kostin brings out the heavy artillery and urges his skittish clients to consider that “surprisingly” equities have historically performed well alongside rising expectations for Fed hikes. Here, the bank examines the six-month periods since 2004 when OIS pricing of the 5-year-ahead fed funds rate increased by 25 bps, excluding episodes when the Fed was cutting rates.

  During these episodes, nominal 10Y yields typically rose by 52 bps with roughly even contributions from real yields and breakevens. Despite this, the S&P 500 returned 9% (vs. its unconditional 6-month average of 5%). Higher earnings expectations drove these rallies as increases in fed funds pricing usually coincided with improving expectations for economic growth. However, as we have repeatedly warned and as even Kostin concedes, “the current inflation-led hiking cycle may prove more challenging for equities.” We are not sure this will boost the confidence level of Goldman clients who are on the fence to just BTFD…

  After the initial stage, when markets price more eventual rate hikes, cyclical sectors typically outperform while bond proxies lagged according to Goldman. Industrials, Consumer Discretionary, and Materials outperform the S&P 500 on average during these episodes, with financials especially sensitive to the long-term interest rate outlook and also outperforming. Meanwhile, bond proxy sectors such as Utilities and Consumer Staples underperformed sharply.

  

  As noted above, value has typically outperformed alongside rising market expectations for Fed hiking, but only in cases when the the hiking cycle was led by growth expectations, not to crush inflation, so this time one can argue that everything will be flipped. And while traditionally, small-caps also outperformed, as “quality” factors underperformed, the recent weakness in small-caps confirms that this is anything but an ordinary rate hike cycle.

  Curiously, even in his bullish pitch to clients, Kostin – perhaps hoping to preserve some credibility- admits that this is not a typical rate hike cycle, and the recent hawkish pivot has been driven not by “improving growth expectations but by inflation risks” yet even so Goldman’s economists expect growth to remain above-trend in 2022 because, of course, what else can they do: start sounding like Zero Hedge and admit that the Fed is hiking into a recession.

  And indeed, Kostin admits that “fading expectations for fiscal stimulus and the hit from Omicron have led our economists to downgrade their growth outlook in recent weeks” however – perhaps unwilling to piss off Biden too much – they still forecast 3.4% GDP growth this year, a stepdown from the 5-6% pace in 2021 but still above their 1.75% estimate of trend growth. Translation: the US will be in a recession by the midterms, courtesy of the Fed.

  So after all that, if Goldman clients aren’t running for the hills, maybe the will BTFD after all, and for them, Kostin writes that investors “should balance their exposures to Growth and Value” as Goldman’s rates strategists expect yields will continue to rise, a dynamic that should support Value over Growth, unless of course we enter stagflation at which point all is lost (incidentally, as noted last week, Goldman expects nominal 10-year yield to hit 2.0% by year-end 2022 (with real rates rising to -0.70% almost where they are now) and 2.3% by the end of 2023).

  

  From a growth perspective, Goldman economists expect the waning of the Omicron wave to lift GDP growth from 2% in 1Q to 3% in 2Q, supporting Value stocks. But they expect growth will slow to a 2% pace by 4Q 2022, the type of environment that generally supports Growth stocks. Translation: yes, growth stocks are getting crushed now, but as soon as the current whisper of a recession/stagflation becomes a chorus, watch as “growth stocks” (i.e., the bubble/bitcoin baskets) explode higher and surpass their previous all-time highs.

  In short, Goldman’s current recommended sector overweights reflect a barbell of Growth and Value:

  • Info Tech remains the bank’s long-standing overweight due to its secular growth and strong profit margins.
  • Financials should benefit from rising interest rates
  • Health Care combines secular growth qualities with a deep relative valuation discount.

  Finally, from a thematic perspective, Goldman continues to recommend investors own highly profitable growth stocks relative to growth stocks with low or no profitability. To this, all we can add is that with low growth stocks having been absolutely nuked by now, the highest convexity when the recessionary turn comes, will be precisely in the no profitability growth sector, which will double in no time once the coming recession/easing cycle becomes the dominant narrative.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 19:00

• Politicizing COVID-19 From The Start
  Politicizing COVID-19 From The Start

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

  From the moment COVID-19 appeared, the pandemic became inseparable from politics.

  

  Political frenzy was inevitable since the SARS-CoV-2 virus may have escaped from a level-4 security virology lab in Wuhan, China.

  The rapid-fire spread soon threatened to indict the Chinese communist government for nearly destroying the world economy and killing millions.

  Western elites, in response, feared that their own lucrative investments in China would be jeopardized by such disclosures – and so acted accordingly in defending Beijing.

  Nonetheless, one scenario that remains intriguing is that the escaped virus was birthed by gain-of-function research scientists, overseen by elements of the Chinese communist military. Worse, the lab was given subsidies by U.S. health authorities, routed through third parties. Hiding all of that damaging information warped government policy and media coverage.

  Belatedly, a panicked China shut down all domestic travel in and out of Wuhan – but not flights abroad to Western Europe and the United States.

  The rest is history.

  From the outset, the World Health Organization simply spread false talking points about the outbreak from the Chinese government, delaying a robust global response.

  Former President Donald Trump’s political opponents initially told Americans to shop and travel as usual – only to pivot as cases mounted and they blamed the president.

  The U.S. 2020 ban on travel from China was met with charges of racism and xenophobia from presidential candidates. Ironically, many were simply channeling racist and xenophobic China’s propaganda.

  Many doctors kept hammering the need for therapeutics, including taboo off-label use of cheap generic drugs. The use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin was widely ridiculed, despite continuing studies from abroad attesting to their usefulness.

  Trump’s Operation Warp Speed project to develop vaccinations was also pilloried. Candidates Kamala Harris and Joe Biden did their best to talk down the safety of the impending inoculations. But once in power, they projected their own prior harmful rhetoric onto so-called “anti-vaxxers.”

  Then they claimed credit for the initial success of the Trump vaccinations.

  The Pfizer corporation had promised a major pre-election announcement about its likely rollout of a vaccine in October, just days before the 2020 election.

  Then, mysteriously, Pfizer claimed the vaccine, in fact, would not be ready before November 3. A few days after the election of Joe Biden, the company reversed course and announced the vaccinations would soon be available.

  Then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo obstructed most all federal help with Trump’s fingerprints on it. That way Cuomo became a media, Emmy-winning darling – before resigning in disgrace.

  Cuomo’s policies of steering infected patients into long-term-care facilities doomed over 10,000 of the elderly. New York is now illegally using race to grant preferences in the allotments of tests and new drugs.

  The rhetoric of the media-progressive nexus that mandatory, massive lockdowns were necessary all but destroyed a booming Trump economy and denied critical medical care to millions. Emphasizing therapeutics, natural herd immunity, and the resilience of the youth to the disease were all pronounced “anti-science” by the demagogues on the Left.

  Various celebrities and politicos – such as California Governor Gavin Newsom and failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton – boasted the pandemic lockdown offered the perfect crisis that must not go to waste politically. Actress Jane Fonda even crowed that COVID-19 was a “gift from God to the Left” in helping to end Donald Trump.

  In the waning days of the 2020 campaign, Biden went so far as to blame Trump personally for all the deaths from the virus.

  Once the vaccinations had seemed to work in early 2021, an upbeat Joe Biden boasted that he would end the virus by summer 2021, by following “the science.” He went so far as to claim that no one had been vaccinated prior to his inauguration even though 17 million, including Biden himself, had been.

  Then Nemesis answered such hubris.

  The unforeseen delta and omicron variants hit. A new phrase, “breakthrough case,” revealed that the vaccinations often could only prevent serious illness, but not infection or infectiousness.

  Suddenly the best and brightest people with three shots, who had blasted the red-state rubes as the ignorant un-vaxxed – got sick. More have now died from the virus on Biden’s than on Trump’s watch.

  A warped economy amid renewed COVID-19 outbreaks helped to further destroy Biden’s waning popularity.

  In reaction, the Left now calls for realism, emphasis on treatments, and acknowledgment of the value of natural immunities. It is even newly curious about the origins of the virus, and the need to “get back to normal.”

  We are suddenly told that thousands had died “with” rather than “because” of COVID – the exact opposite of what we heard in the Trump era.

  A skeptic might suggest terror over the impending midterms finally made the Left face reality.

  Politicizing the pandemic is a euphemism. In truth, thousands of Americans have died needlessly because of weaponized disinformation about China’s culpability, vaccines, useful drugs, lockdowns, racial preferences, and long-care facilities.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 18:30

• Which Nation Has The Most 'Powerful' Passport?
  Which Nation Has The Most ‘Powerful’ Passport?

  Some passports afford their bearers more freedom than others.

  

  In 2022, Japan and Singapore have been named the countries with the world’s most powerful passports by the Henley Passport Index.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Holders of these passports have the unbeatable luxury of being able to enter 192 countries without applying for and receiving a visa beforehand.

  South Korea (not pictured) and Germany follow with visa-free travel to 190 jurisdictions.

  Even though the United States is further down the ranking, the American passport still yields considerable power. U.S. passport holders can travel to 186 countries without major restrictions. That’s a level of freedom also enjoyed by citizens in New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Belgium and the United Kingdom. At the other end of the scale though, the situation is very different. For passport holders in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria for example, the world is very much not their proverbial oyster.

  The Afghanistan passport wields the least power in the ranking, with just 26 destinations possible visa-free. As this infographic shows, the situation is similar for Iraq (28) and Syria (29).

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 18:00

• A Former SAC PM's Advice To Traders: "Sit Tight, Be Right"
  A Former SAC PM’s Advice To Traders: “Sit Tight, Be Right”

  By Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research

  Today’s story is about patience. Whether you are trading or investing, 2022 will require more calm thoughtfulness than any year in recent memory. History shows that as crises fade into the rearview mirror, market volatility (and the opportunities it brings) declines. Also, there is a real tug of war now between fundamentals and Fed policy. Lastly, the best places to make money in stocks (cyclicals, in our view) are volatile and rarely well-structured industries or companies. Bottom line: 2022 is a “measure twice, cut one” sort of year.

  * * *

  Strange as it may sound, I learned most of what I know today on this topic while working for Steve Cohen at the old SAC Capital. Yes, it was a (very) fast money trading shop. And yes, Steve’s trading process demanded absolute adherence to a specific set of rules and mindset. Price action, not opinion or emotion, defined right and wrong.

  But SAC is also where I learned the old trader’s saying, “Sit tight, be right”. If your process is sound, from idea generation to risk management and exit discipline, then patience determines profitability. Simply put, big trades often take time to work.

  Everyone at SAC had their own approach to cultivating patience, which in the context of the firm’s trading bent often meant simply distracting themselves rather than staring at their daily P&L. Steve might invite his family to lunch and actually take an hour off the desk with them if he was worried about being shaken out of a large position intraday. Other traders occupied their time by planning where to go for lunch or dinner (traders think about food a lot). As for me, I would spend hours on a forward calendar of catalysts that might offer new trading ideas (analysts think about data a lot).

  Many years after leaving SAC, a hedge fund performance analytics firm showed me some research that put the importance of patience into even starker relief. Hedge funds, as a whole, are good at finding winning ideas. Their performance would often be better, however, if they held those ideas longer. Academic work on institutional investor (long only and hedge funds) behavior shows that the problem is structural. So much of money management marketing is pitching new ideas to gather assets that “old ideas” (those currently in the portfolio) get crowded out too early in order to take stakes in new names.

  I bring all this up because 2022 feels very much like a year where patience will be the defining factor when it comes to outperformance. Whether you are bullish or bearish on a market, sector, investment theme or individual idea, it will take longer to get paid for your point of view than the last several years.

  Three reasons I think that’s true:

  1: US equity market volatility historically declines in the years after a shock. The chart below shows the CBOE VIX Index back to 1990. As highlighted, there have been 4 notable VIX spikes since then. In each case volatility declined for several (3-9) years thereafter. In March 2022 we will be 2 full years into the post-pandemic market recovery. Volatility has already been declining. The VIX today is only 20, for example, even with the selloff and January’s choppy action.

  

  2: There are times when fundamentals (i.e., corporate earnings) matter and then there are times when changes in macro conditions matter more.

  • At the bottom in March 2020, macro mattered; fiscal and monetary policy supported the US economy during the Pandemic Crisis.
  • From Q2 2020 to Q4 2021, US corporate earnings took over the market narrative. The S&P 500 earned 23 percent more in 2021 than it had pre-pandemic. Wall Street analysts were slow to acknowledge that fact, which allowed for a long series of earnings beats.
  • We are now entering a period where the Federal Reserve will engage in a never-before-seen experiment: raising interest rates off zero and reducing the size of its balance sheet in the same year.

  All this sets up 2022 as a tug of war between the relative certainty of strong corporate earnings and the absolute unknown effect of novel Fed policy. As we outlined earlier this week, the setup here reminds us a lot of 1994. Back then, the Fed embarked on a surprise series of aggressive rate hikes and investors simply had no idea what that would do to the US economy. Now, Fed communication may be better – they have telegraphed liftoff and runoff quite clearly – but the market is still left wondering what results will come from their decisions.

  3: The sectors that have been working – and we still like – are not what one would call easy stories to love. Large cap Financials (+6 pct YTD) are cheap but face structural challenges from venture capital funded FinTech disruptors. Large cap Energy (+14 pct YTD) is an ESG nightmare, and you have to believe (as we do) that traditional carbon-based energy has several years of new demand highs ahead of it. Airlines (+7 pct YTD), which Jessica just highlighted earlier this week, are no one’s idea of a stable or well-structured industry.

  As much as we like cyclical sectors, we know there will be sudden and violent rotations out of them through 2022. They have a tailwind but owning them in 2022 is not the same as holding Big Tech in 2020 – 2021. If nothing else, their competitive positions are not as strong. In trading parlance, you are “renting” these names rather than buying a forever home for capital.

  Summing up: 2022 is set to bring us lower average US equity volatility, a see-saw dynamic between fundamentals and Fed policy, and rotation into cyclical (and often volatile) sectors with little to offer besides earnings leverage. It will be a year for patience and, just importantly, discipline. Sit tight, be right.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 17:30

• Leaked Fauci Financials Expose How Millionaire Doctor Profited From Pandemic
  Leaked Fauci Financials Expose How Millionaire Doctor Profited From Pandemic

  Finally, after a handful of organizations tried suing Dr. Anthony Fauci in order to have them released, the good doctor’s financials – along with those of his wife, who is the NIH’s top bioethicist – have been disclosed in detail. And they were leaked by the same Senator who Fauci called a “moron” last week during a hot-mic moment.

  

  We already knew that Dr. Fauci is the highest-paid federal government employee, earning an annual salary of more than $400K. His wife, Christine Grady, earns $176K as Chief of the Department of Bioethics at the NIH.

  The records, published by Republican Roger Marshall, himself a doctor and also the junior US senator from Kansas, showed that the Faucis’ have a combined net worth of more than $10MM.

  🚨🚨 BREAKING! I obtained Dr. Fauci’s previously unpublished financial disclosures. Dr. Fauci was completely dishonest about his disclosures being readily accessible to the public which is why I am releasing them now.

  Dr. Fauci’s Financial Disclosures ⬇️https://t.co/KdRbedRTX5

  — Dr. Roger Marshall (@RogerMarshallMD) January 15, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  As the Daily Mail explains, Fauci, 80, has led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984 and, if he continues until the end of Biden’s term in 2024, will have made roughly $2.5MM as the president’s chief medical advisor. When he retires, Fauci’s pension will be the largest in US history, exceeding $350,000 per year.

  As a reminder, Dr. Fauci lied to Congress yet again by insisting that his financials were public, when they very much weren’t (before being leaked by the Senator from Kansas, that is).

  While the doctor has insisted he hasn’t profited from the pandemic, his paperwork showed that he and his wife were paid $14,000 to “virtually” attend a series of galas directly related to his position as the nation’s de facto COVID czar.

  

  Perhaps the most entertaining disclosure from Dr. Fauci’s financials is the revelation that the couple owns a restaurant in tony San Francisco. It’s called Jackson Fillmore Trattoria. Unfortunately for them, the restaurant didn’t make any money last year.

  Sen. Marshall clashed with the 80-year-old doctor on Tuesday when Marshall wanted to see Fauci’s financial information. Fauci replied that the documents were public, and appeared to take umbrage at even being asked. “Yes or no, would you be willing to submit to Congress and the public a financial disclosure that includes your past and current investments?” Marshall asked. “Our office cannot find them.” Fauci replied: “I don’t understand why you’re asking me that question…my financial disclosure is public knowledge and has been so for the last 37 years or so.”

  According to the Center for Public Integrity, Fauci’s financial statements were indeed publicly available, however, obtaining them was a lengthy procedure: they requested the document in May 2020 didn’t receive it until three months later.

  All told, Dr. Fauci has three accounts with Charles Schwab that have a total of $8,337,940.90. He has a contributory IRA with $638,519.70 in it, and a brokerage trust account with $2,403,522.28. Finally, the most valuable of the three disclosed was a Schwab One Trust containing $5,295,898.92.

  

  

  

  Most of Dr. Fauci’s wealth comes from his government salary, but he has also made a substantial portion from books and appearances. Sen. Marshall is pushing for a new law called the “FAUCI Act” that would require unelected bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci to produce more thorough financial disclosures so that they can be appropriately scrutinized by the American public.

  Readers can find more disclosures on Sen. Marshall’s website, which features a more comprehensive breakdown of the doctor’s financials, along with copies of all the associated paperwork.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 17:00

• Democrats Moving Away From Lockdown Restrictions Over Fears Of Being Crushed Politically
  Democrats Moving Away From Lockdown Restrictions Over Fears Of Being Crushed Politically

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  In response to plummeting approval ratings, Democrats are now moving away from lockdown policies they previously vehemently advocated over fears about being wiped out politically.

  

  That’s according to a new report by Politico, which notes how, “Omicron is surging — and Democrats aren’t shutting things down this time.”

  “From New York to California, Democratic mayors and governors are fighting to keep schools and businesses open with an urgency they haven’t flexed before in the pandemic,” writes Lisa Kashinsky.

  That sea change likely has a lot to do with Republicans securing a November clean sweep of the House, as well as the offices of governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general in Virginia.

  Republican Glenn Youngkin appealed to parents who were angry over school closures and other issues such as mask mandates, while New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy came closer to defeat than expected over frustrations relating to COVID restrictions.

  Big events such as the Super Bowl in L.A. will now go ahead, while the likes of Fauci and Biden refrained from telling Americans to cancel holiday plans despite record case numbers caused by Omicron.

  “Democrats went further than most Republicans in shutting down businesses, enforcing social distancing and requiring masks to tame the spread of the virus — and were initially rewarded politically for their caution,” states the report.

  R.I.P. Lockdown America 🇺🇸
  As we say in Boston: It’s Ova!
  As we say in Miami: Bienvenido!https://t.co/FsRvz4Pfse #Dems #politics #trends #pandemic #elections #lockdownskill #addiction #suicide #chronicdisease #obesity #alcoholism #omicron #vaccinemandates #vax #COVID19 #society pic.twitter.com/nQpcTOEBs6

  — Diane Mantouvalos (@AndoniaPR) January 10, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  “But as the nation trudges into a third pandemic year in the grips of another variant-fueled wave, blue state leaders faced with exhausted and frustrated voters have lost the stomach for strict shutdowns.”

  According to Bob Blendon, a polling and political strategy expert at the Harvard T.H. Chan School, Democrats “see an upcoming election, they see backlashes.”

  “They can’t close things down, and there is no public tolerance for serious disruptions in people’s lives. People have run out of patience,” said Blendon.

  Polling has also been dreadful for Democrats, with Biden’s approval rating sinking to a new low as just 15.5% of Americans say they trust the president when it comes to information about COVID-19.

  “Everything our government tried to contain this virus has failed and now, thanks to Omicron, everyone is getting infected with a “live covid vaccine” that’s relatively mild and actually works,” comments Chris Menahan.

  “With the combination of Omicron infecting millions and Democrats getting wiped out politically there’s a decent chance we may actually be able to move on from this hysteria and get on with life.”

  *  *  *

  Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

  In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Get early access, exclusive content and behinds the scenes stuff by following me on Locals.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 16:30

• Supermarkets Slash Hours As Workers Call Out Sick; Store Shelves Remain Bare
  Supermarkets Slash Hours As Workers Call Out Sick; Store Shelves Remain Bare

  Labor shortages at supermarkets across the country have increased in recent weeks as the COVID-19 omicron variant continues to spread. Workers are calling sick, and there are not enough cashiers, baggers, and stockers, forcing some supermarket chains to slash hours of operations. Compounding labor woes, supply chains are still severely snarled as food shortages are being reported nationwide. 

  WSJ reports supermarkets are having difficulty staying open as workers call out sick because of infection. Some grocers are frantically hiring new employees, using temporary employment agencies, and overworking current staff to keep stores from shuttering. 

  

  The seven-store supermarket chain Stew Leonard’s in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey had 200 employees in quarantine or isolation as of last Thursday despite a 90% employee-vaccination rate. This represents about 7% of all employees. 

  “We sort of feel like we’ve got to buckle down for round two,” Chief Executive Stew Leonard Jr. said, adding that the loss of employees to infections has hampered operations. 

  American supermarket chain Giant Eagle Inc. which operates 470 stores, has avoided closing locations amid the omicron surge by adjusting hours of operations. The company’s chief compliance officer, Vic Vercammen, said the company had seen a spike in workers calling sick because of infection. 

  Across Alabama and Georgia, Piggly Wiggly stores are overscheduling workers and using temporary work agencies to keep store shelves stocked as staffing woes developed this year because of the omicron spread. Operations have been affected, and store hours have been reduced in some locations. 

  In the Southeast, Harris Teeter supermarkets, owned by Kroger Co., will close one hour earlier, effective Monday, so that employees can restock shelves due to the loss of stockers. 

  Staffing shortages also impacted Fresh Encounter Inc., a 100-store supermarket chain based in Ohio. The chain is now closing at 10 pm local time versus 24 hours a day. 

  Michael Needler Jr., the chain’s chief executive of Fresh Encounter, said, “the staffing situation started out very tenuous. Layering in Omicron vacancies on top of that makes it very, very stressful.” 

  On top of staffing issues, supply-chain bottlenecks are plaguing supermarkets, resulting in bare shelves across the country. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 16:00

• Liquidity's​ ​Effect​ ​On​ ​Volatility
  Liquidity’s​ ​Effect​ ​On​ ​Volatility

  By Macro Ops Substack

  The​ ​proper​ ​way​ ​to​ ​analyze​ ​potential​ ​volatility​ ​conditions​ ​looks​ ​something​ ​like​ ​the​ ​picture​ ​below: 

  

  Current​ ​events​ ​and​ ​macro​ ​news​ ​come​ ​AFTER​ ​liquidity.

  If​ ​markets​ ​have​ ​loose​ ​liquidity​ ​conditions,​ ​no​ ​amount​ ​of​ ​Trump​ ​tweets​ ​or​ ​White​ ​House shakeups​ ​will​ ​cause​ ​volatility. And​ ​if​ ​liquidity​ ​conditions​ ​are​ ​tight,​ ​no​ ​amount​ ​of​ ​good​ ​news​ ​can​ ​save​ ​markets​ ​from volatility.​ 

  This ​ makes​ ​ intuitive​ ​ sense​ ​ when​ ​ ​you ​ look​ at how ​liquidity ​ impacts market​ ​ microstructure.​ Every​ ​market,​ ​whether​ ​it​ ​be ​ FX,​ bonds,​ commodities,​ ​or stock, has​ an order book with bids and offers that​ looks​ something​ like​ ​this: 

  

  It’s​ ​just​ ​a​ ​bunch​ ​of​ ​buyers​ ​and​ ​sellers​ ​displaying​ ​how​ ​much​ ​they’re​ ​willing​ ​to​ ​transact​ ​and​ ​at what ​ price.​ When​ ​financial​ ​conditions​ ​are​ ​loose,​ ​with​ ​high​ ​liquidity,​ ​everyone​ ​has​ ​a​ ​bunch​ ​of​ ​cash​ ​and​ ​credit they​ ​need​ ​to​ ​put​ ​to​ ​work.​ ​All​ ​this​ ​demand​ ​flows​ ​into​ ​the​ ​market​ ​and​ ​stacks​ ​up​ ​the​ ​order​ ​book which compresses prices.​ A​ ​liquid​ ​order​ ​book​ ​looks​ ​something​ ​like​ ​this: 

  

  The​ ​difference​ ​between​ ​the​ ​bid​ ​and​ ​the​ ​offer ​ is​ ​ tight and there’s a​ lot​ of size at​ ​ each price level.​ Price​ ​will​ ​bounce​ ​around​ ​in​ ​a​ ​modest​ ​range​ ​because the order​ ​book​  ​can​ easily absorb any​ incoming​ ​orders. 

  A​ ​liquid​ ​market​ ​translates​ ​into​ ​lower​ ​volatility​. 

  The​ ​opposite​ ​happens​ ​when​ financial​ ​ ​conditions​ ​are​ tight​ ​​and​ ​the​ ​system​ ​is​ ​illiquid.​ ​Investors are no longer​ lined up to buy financial​ assets.​ They​ ​don’t​​ ​have​ ​the​ ​cash​ ​or​ ​credit​ ​available. 

  During​ ​illiquid​ ​times​ ​the​ ​order​ ​book​ ​looks​ ​something​ ​like​ ​this: 

  

  So​ ​not​ ​only​ ​are​ ​buyers​ ​and​ ​sellers​ ​farther​ ​apart,​ ​they​ ​have​ ​less​ ​to​ ​buy​ ​and​ ​sell.​ ​Price​ ​will oscillate​ ​wildly​ ​between​ ​all​ ​these​ ​different​ values ​because ​there’s​​ ​not​ ​much​ ​here​ ​to​ absorb​​ ​new orders coming into the market.​              

  An​ ​illiquid​ ​market​ ​translates​ ​into​ ​higher​ ​volatility​.

  This​ ​connection​ ​between​ ​liquidity​ ​and​ ​market​ ​microstructure​ ​is​ ​why​ ​we​ ​see​ ​moves​ ​in​ ​volatility follow ​liquidity​ so​ ​closely.​              

  Higher​ ​black​ ​line​ ​=​ ​tighter​ ​liquidity​ ​conditions.

  

  The​ ​last​ ​time​ ​liquidity​ ​conditions​ ​tightened​ was ​in​ ​2014 ​and​​ ​into​ ​2015.​ ​During​ ​this​ ​time​ ​the​ ​Fed was ​ winding down its​ QE​ ​​program​ ​—​ ​sucking ​​liquidity​ right​​ ​out​ ​of​ ​the​ system.​

  The​ ​stock​ ​market​ ​struggled,​ ​the​ ​dollar​ ​strengthened,​ ​commodities​ ​dropped,​ ​and​ ​as​ ​you​ ​can​ ​see in ​ the​ ​ ​chart​ ​above, the VIX popped.​ It​ ​popped​ ​primarily​ ​due​ ​to​ ​tightening​ ​liquidity conditions​. 

  Since​ ​then​ ​the​ ​market​ ​has​ ​adjusted​ ​to​ ​the​ ​absence​ ​of​ ​the​ ​Fed’s​ ​bond​ ​purchases.​ ​Liquidity conditions​ ​have​ ​improved​ ​ ​and​ ​VIX​ ​responded​ ​by​ ​embarking​ ​on​ ​a​ ​sustained​ ​downtrend throughout​ ​all​ ​of​ ​2016​ ​and​ ​now​ ​into​ ​2017.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 15:30

• Manhattan Apartments With Doorman Soar To New Record High
  Manhattan Apartments With Doorman Soar To New Record High

  What’s stunning is that median apartment rents in Manhattan are back to pre-pandemic highs. Rents for apartments with door attendants soared to a new record high while ones without door attendants are still below 2019 levels. Some argue New York City’s most expensive borough is back, but the “back-to-work” barometer tells a different story. 

  Appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate released a new report Thursday that highlighted median rent in the borough increased 16% to $3,475 in December compared to a year ago. The rents are back to levels last seen right before the pandemic crash. 

  

  The overall increase in rents was primarily due to a sizeable increase for apartment buildings with a doorman, which climbed 23% to a staggering $4,298 (a new record high). In comparison, buildings without doorkeepers rose 7.8% to $2,695 (still below 2019 levels). 

  Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, said demand for luxury buildings is a prime example of polarization in the market, with prices for apartment buildings without a doorman still lagging pre-pandemic levels. 

  Rental inventory is tight for luxury buildings as landlords slashed generous concessions. Inventory has plunged 81% from a year ago in December, and the vacancy rate is 1.7%. There was also a 39% plunge in new leases for the month. 

  Miller said, “the market is coming off of unsustainable activity levels and trending toward more sustainable patterns in the coming months. Omicron is in the mix for sure, just slowing down activity too.” 

  Meanwhile, Kastle Systems, whose electronic access systems secure thousands of office buildings across NYC, showed only 17% of workers were back at their desks in early January, compared with 37% on Dec. 2. Omicron has certainly impacted back-to-work as employers have recently sent workers home. 

  

  Still, the good news is that Morgan Stanley has called the top on Omicron, and it could peak in the next month. So maybe soaring rental demand is workers returning to the city with the hopes the virus pandemic will end this year. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 15:00

• Denial Of Natural Immunity In CMS Vaccine Mandate "Unprecedented In Modern History": Scott Atlas
  Denial Of Natural Immunity In CMS Vaccine Mandate “Unprecedented In Modern History”: Scott Atlas

  Authored by Allen Zhong and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times,

  Denying natural immunity in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service (CMS) vaccine mandates is “unprecedented in modern history,” a prominent public health expert said.

  

  Dr. Scott Atlas, a former White House COVID-19 Task Force adviser during the Trump administration, made the remarks after the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decide to uphold the CMS vaccine mandates in a Thursday ruling.

  He told The Epoch Times that the ruling is “another serious denial of scientific fact” specifically mentioning the denial of natural immunity in CMS vaccine mandates.

  “Our continued denial of superior protection in recovered individuals, with or without vaccination, compared to vaccinated individuals who’ve never had the infection,” he said.

  “The denial of that is simply unprecedented in modern history, proven fact and decades of fundamental immunology are somehow denied.”

  “If we are a society where the leaders repeatedly deny the fact, I’m very concerned about the future of such a society,” he added.

  The Epoch Times reached out to the SCOTUS, CMS, and the White House for comments.

  

  Members of the Supreme Court pose for a group photo at the Supreme Court in Washington, on April 23, 2021. (Erin Schaff/Pool/Getty Images)

  The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the Biden administration’s private business vaccine mandate imposed by the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Meanwhile, America’s highest court decided to uphold the CMS vaccine mandate covering 10.4 million health care workers at 76,000 medical facilities.

  In the 5–4 ruling in the CMS vaccine mandate, John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh joined the Democrat-nominated trio of justices, while Clarence Thomas offered a dissent that was joined by Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett.

  The majority of the court stated that the vaccine mandate “falls within the authorities that Congress has conferred upon” the Health and Human Service Secretary (HHS) Xavier Becerra.

  CMS is part of the HHS.

  The ruling also disagrees with the dozens of red states who said that CMS failed to consider the benefits of natural immunity.

  “Given the rule-making record, it cannot be maintained that the Secretary failed to ‘examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for’ his decisions to require vaccination of employees with ‘natural immunity’ from prior COVID-19 illness,” read the majority opinion (pdf).

  CMS applauded the SCOTUS ruling saying it’s “extremely pleased” for the results.

  “We look forward to working with health care providers and their workers to protect patients. We will continue our extensive outreach and assistance efforts encouraging individuals working in health care to get vaccinated,” CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said in a statement.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 14:30